To Honour the moment
by Stingmon
Summary: His crew vanishes. His ship falls to dust. From now on Zuko's quest through the world will be haunted by cold, rust, and by the salamander…
1. Prologue

_**To honour the moment**_

Translation of the French fanfiction "En l'honneur de l'instant".

Here is the long overdue rewritten prolog, my first take at it being utterly incomprehensible. I tried to change as possible as possible, though, because I do like a little weirdness. I hope it's all right.

Have a good reading!

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Prologue: _shattering Time_

_I'm not here…_

The air was fragrant. The sunshine pressed softly against his eyelids. A golden light poured down on his face. It carried the scent of incense and flowers. A soft breeze swelled the crimson curtains of his window, humming and warm, like an incarnation of his own peaceful mind. His fingers traced a light fold on the silk scarlet sheet he was resting on.

He felt so much relief it ached. What a joy, what a delight to be back…

His fingers went up to the arch of his eyebrows. Palm against his lips, his hand rested on the tissue of his skin, pale and smooth. Unburned.

_This is a dream._

Zuko knew it. Yet his joy, stained with a strange melancholia, refused to alter. He was home at last… He must have opened his eyes, for the red drapes of his old bed were slowly appearing. They were somewhat blurry, hung higher than they should have, and on them had been embroidered a huge yellow-eyed, open-mouthed salamander. Nevertheless the place remained familiar enough to fool his sleep-clouded mind. He was home again. The sun was just rising. The day was his: he had nothing special to do. His face was intact. Everything was fine. Perhaps today he would even see a glimpse of his father in a corridor, perhaps…

In a way, he was still able to think. Even asleep, blurred thoughts formed, blindly, led by a tortuous logic he probably wouldn't follow once awake. Behind the half-drawn curtains of his bed, he tried to make out his room, rather dark in spite of his homeland's beautiful sun.

He wouldn't have been able to express how much he loved, adored, missed this golden light, the dizzying centre of his dream. So much prettier than this pathetic excuse for…He was smiling, he noticed, a smile that weighed on his heart. But why was he sad?

He wanted to enjoy this moment, he decided: rise up, see his room better, maybe the rest of the palace or the view from his window. In case he wouldn't be able to stay for long. He watched with satisfaction his palm sinking in the silk beside him as he sat up. He was thankful he had enough control over his dream to move. Too thankful to worry about the strange coal marks that furrowed his fingers and ploughed the back of his hand.

The silk on which he had slept was warm. The very air was warm, filling his ancient, beautiful house. He wanted to tip his head back and drink the heat of the equatorial sun: he had missed it for too long. Perhaps that was why he felt so homesick, why he had been having such dreams so frequently, the past few weeks. With this _cold_…

But he didn't want to think about it yet. Why, why did he always have to think?

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, letting his legs swing a few inches above a dark oak floor. Everything was so peaceful. It was relaxing, not to be angry anymore. To be happy, to be sad, without having to dread what other people might think. He still couldn't quite remember why his heart ached so much.

Surely it was normal…

The bed was swinging as well, now, at a soothing and steady rate. It seemed to encourage him to stand up completely. He wanted to see the view from his window. To lean on his elbows and watch, just for a minute, what had been his all his childhood long. Like a farewell he had never been able to bid three years ago, but now, perhaps…

He was standing in the half-light. His fingers closed around the crimson cloth of the curtains. That view…A burning hope made him shiver, slowing him down, almost paralysing him. Like he was afraid. But there was nothing to fear… The velvet felt heavy in his hand. It felt as though a complementary force was drawing it against the window, towards the void outside.

And why was it so dark all of a sudden?

Zuko turned his head. The room, cheerful and warm a moment ago, was now plunged in darkness. He could barely make out the twisted shapes of his furniture, hunched up in the corners, or the ghost of a canopy bed invading the centre of the room. The only source of light seemed to be the glowing eyes of the salamander, a small shadow coiled up in the dark a few feet away from him that had slid down the curtain to the floor and was looking at him intensely.

At first, Zuko didn't dare move. The animal remained silent: it was motionless aside from his slowly undulating tail, spiked with red scales, and the moving glow of his tiny golden eyes. A sardonic smirk was spreading over its mouth, gradually revealing two shiny fangs.

The young prince took an uneasy step towards the newcomer, looking desperately for an excuse that could justify his presence in the palace, when a high-pitched screeching, an awful roar of metal tearing metal to pieces, chilled his blood.

The creature was laughing.

"Be quiet!" he whispered hastily. "If someone finds me here…"

The uneasiness had turned into fright. Banished. _Banished. _He was not supposed to be in the Fire Nation. They could have him executed; his own family would sentence him to death if…

But the salamander's laugh was amplifying, like a shrill alarm bell; words without meaning were appearing among the noise and echoed against the marble walls.

_Do you see lost paths…one hundred glass splinters…_

_ Or have you forgotten…_

_ Scattered foes…the word…_

The prince wanted to shout at it to be quiet. He must not be seen here; he had no right to be here. However he couldn't hear his own voice among the high-pitched echoes of the beast, among the wild accusations he could not understand.

_Or have you…scattered…the word…remains…_

_ …Remains…_

The creature seemed to be mocking him, with its slanted eyes glowing nefariously in the dark. The guards were going to hear them. Zuko tried to rush at it and shut it up, but he was too slow, too heavy. The salamander had already crept through the half-open door and was running away, snickering shrilly, like a drill against a stone wall. What if someone saw that thing…

The young prince was chasing after the red creature. His steps echoed dreadfully in corridors he had absolutely no right to go through. Everything was too bright, suddenly, shattered and dazzling like a maze of mirrors. The salamander's mocking laugh ricocheted off the walls. Someone was going to hear them. He didn't know where to head. He blindly followed the brief undulation of the lizard's tail, constantly disappearing, further and further into the labyrinth…

_It remains…the blood on your face…_

_ Will you try to wipe it day and night…_

-Shut up… SHUT UP!

_Expose the wound to lacerating eyes…?_

_ I shall sense…_

_ …the fear, the name…the tiredness…_

_ …the anger and the line…_

Lower and lower, he was sinking into the dark. The corridors were narrower now, sharp and tortuous, glowing red like the inside of his ship. He knew, nevertheless, that they were approaching the palace's very centre. His heart was pounding madly against his temples. He was shivering. He couldn't hear his own screams.

Keep running… If the beast reached the throne room and his father was told…

Suddenly there were no more meanders. He was running down one long metal passageway that led him to a crimson curtain. The fire emblem eaten by rust. The salamander wormed its way in, its triumphant laugh was resounding up to his very bones, too late, _too late! _He couldn't stop running. The velvet curtain whipped his face and he nearly fell as he entered the enormous hall, peering into the dark, and saw…

Had to scream.

To express the horror his stomach was churning with.

Run. Stay. _WAKE UP…_

A spasm, and his eyes shot open, finally dragging him out of his nightmare's turbid waters. He was sitting in the dark; he was cold. He was sweating and trembling. The dreadful vision was already evaporating from his mind, like fumes, leaving nothing but a vivid feeling of repulsion, of fright and of sick fascination in the pit of his stomach. Only one fragment lingered before vanishing as well, a high-pitched, chilling echo:

_The sea is freezing; yet he keeps on sailing…_

_ To the bottom of his soul… on this pretty long road…_

_ He is heading North…and has no crew… _


	2. May the cold wear you away

_To__ Honour__ the moment_

There it is. At last, I managed to translate that thing. I would like to promise you that my next updates will come sooner, but I'm not that far into the French version, and I'm really slow at writing and translating. Thank you for your reviews. Special thanks to Avocadolove, who kindly accepted to be my beta-reader in spite of all her other works. I don't know what I would have done without her.

Just like the series, this fanfiction will be separated in three books, whose names I slightly twisted. Have a good reading!

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**First Book :**** The Cold**

Chapter 1: _May the cold wear you away_

_ The sea is freezing, yet he keeps sailing…_

_ To the bottom of his soul…On this pretty long road…_

_ He is heading north…and has no crew…_

The spectral voice kept reverberating within the silence of his mind; cold and painful against his cabin's ice-cold walls. It was dark.

Still trembling, Zuko straightened up on the cold brown mattress he had been using as a bed for nearly three years. His numb legs had instinctively tucked up against his body. The thin blanket had slipped down to his waist. The motionless air was eating into his exposed flesh to his very bones. So cold. He grasped his knees, and slowly let his fire-ravaged face drop into the crook of his arms.

Less out of tiredness, perhaps, than to shelter the hideous scar from the outside world.

The darkness was so deep he couldn't see his own hands. However he could make out every object laboriously furnishing the small room, with a spiteful accuracy. Those blood red tapestries scoffingly displaying his homeland's emblem _(the scar was distorting his face like a huge target, he wouldn't see anything…) _The four extinguished candles those never-ending failures in the other side of the room. And the Dao swords, crossed against the wall on his right, motionless in the dark. Cursed secrets.

The floor was slowly rocking to the rhythm of the waves. Trapped inside the ship's entrails, inside the great ribcage whose metal ribs were as sharp as frost. Just for a minute, he would have liked to keep reality at bay. The nightmare's horror had faded; he didn't understand any more why he had so desperately wished his eyes open. All that was left of his dream was the vague reminiscence of a golden light, a fragrant dawn whose warmth he couldn't forget completely.

A feeling of security, of comfort. Of guilty frustration. Of unbearable helplessness weighing like a stone in the pit of his stomach and overtightening his throat. Suffocating, the grief's gnawing hatred. He shivered a little, curling himself up without thinking about putting the thin blanket back over his shoulders.

He was at sea.

Banished as far as the South Pole's ice fields, roaming around like a ghost lost in the fog. Prostrated in the dark, inside this little metal box that couldn't even keep the rigours of winter at bay. Still at sea, hunting down that chimerical foe, the Avatar, the sarcastic shadow vanished long ago; letting his strengths slowly waste away, his heart die as he sank into this quest…_(this __**absurd**__ quest)… _And for the second time he was repeating the same journey, like a fool, in the stupid hope that his searching would be less vain than last year.

Shameful and desperate, sickened, too far away from home for far too long. _Agni, it is so very cold…_

His blood wouldn't circulate all the way to his feet. Crushed to the bone, he would have felt them better. The cold was eating into his ankles already, clinging on to his back, creeping without haste into the nape of his neck. Grimacing in protest, the young man instinctively huddled up tighter in the dark, muscles tensed, but snow was gradually overstepping the barrier of his body and settling on his mind, heavy, haunting. _Wake up, damn it._

Drawing some energy from his frustration, Zuko guided his body heat towards his limbs. _Burn the frost_. Several times he inspired the dead air, deeply, letting his inner fire consume the oxygen and rekindle between his ribs. A wisp of steam flew out of his nostrils, and he felt the warm ash fingers gently brush his skin. A few sparkles ran over his torso and slid on his temples, tiny glimmers already lost in the dark. From the depths of his lungs a forge breath was rising in waves. At first all the teenager could think of was withdrawing to this new body heat and ignoring all the rest.

But he was awake now. And alone. And it was getting annoying to stay still. What time was it? He couldn't hear anything from outside. Perhaps it wasn't even daylight yet… His eyes were gradually accustoming to the dark. In spite of himself, he lifted his head. He couldn't ignore his surroundings any more. The square outlines of the few pieces of furniture cluttering up that little _square_ room whose damn angles wore his nerves a bit more down every passing day. Once again, the cold was eating into his face's exposed skin; flesh attacked by the crawling frost. _I hate that filthy land! _So he jumped on his feet to defy it all, doing one firebending set after another in sudden animosity.

Not caring any longer about the probably ungodly hour, nor about what his uncle was going to say upon realizing he practically hadn't slept at all, this night either.

He wasn't tired, anyway.

Small flames were sliding between his fingers, drawing again his moves in the dark, his arms and feet stretching out as the sequence of movements grew more and more fluid and precise. The cabin was flickering sporadically, on and off. He hated that cabin. It wasn't home; it would never be home. His fists were slicing faster through the air, and it was the hideous frozen setting, three full years of his existence he was trying to reduce to ashes. The hatred was burning like rotten wood. All of a sudden his body caught fire, briefly revealing an angry move.

For a mere second, the scarlet motion blazing against the ivory white of his own skin. Then the exiled prince went on silently with his wild dance, teeth clenched, engulfed in the dark until his next offensive.

The fire was reviving his body, flowing into his veins, purging him from his frustrations, driving away the feverishness his nightmare had led him into. It persisted in his breath when Zuko finished his training, setting the dead air ablaze as he adjusted his armour. His mind was sharper. A hot rage was already heating up his blood.

At first, it was directed at himself. It had really been stupid of him to dream about his homeland like that. And pointless. _What had he been thinking? _He asked himself, now that he had managed to push aside his scarlet room's image, bathed in sunlight. Forbidden memory, so vivid a few minutes ago. So painful…_stop it, you idiot. _It would get him nowhere to stay here, prostrated, turning over memories and shivering like an old man. As for the Avatar, he really didn't need to doubt his existence: the crew was taking care of that for him already. Their zeal for once completely impeccable. So at least not to have to agree with the lieutenant Jee, his enemy was going to exist, he would be persuaded of it as long as necessary. All those fools and their wise advices could get lost for all he cared!

He left his cabin. That tin box was already driving him crazy. The air inside was as cold and rigid as a grave's. His steps were echoing vehemently in the metal corridors, all of them empty, all of them silent. It really had to be early. The young exiled prince was finding his way in the dark with assurance, accustomed to it by now, and he was approaching the fore deck without taking notice.

He had been ordered to hunt the Avatar down, and darn it, those wearing that unbearable smirk, as if they were the only ones _knowing_ he would have been hardly more led on if they had sent him to track down the abominable snowman _(what if…)_ Neither Zhao nor Azula nor _anyone _would be able to say he hadn't tried his hardest to obey, _(…it was to go on that way…) _to the point of exhaustion _(…forever…)_

Salt crystals shattered the course of his reflections. The door had been opened, and the ice-cold wind outside, whistling a high pitched moaning in the dark, was whipping his face as if to scratch his flesh out. Biting frost. Breathing had become painful. He had to make himself step across the doorway.

Of course the night was black as ink.

Ignoring the arctic cold scorching his lips, Zuko kept moving forward on the deserted deck. The sound of his boots against the unstable ground was covered by the ocean's constant roar, muffled in the frozen air. Strange land, where the silence screamed. Strips of whispering fog were ripping in his wake; the teenager reached the ship's prow as if surrounded by ghosts. Rocking slowly, the black horn was extending its metal point towards the horizon, where a thin strip of white light didn't make the sea look brighter yet.

The iron-grey waves were struggling weakly down below. The road was clear, very dark, yet one could make out the ghostly shadows of icebergs from a distance; blinding white in the night. Massive sentries slowly marching past the boat, making it look unpleasantly frail. To Zuko, it was as if those still shapes were radiating their own cold, a huge and bitter cold settling on his neck like the breath of a corpse. There were no stars to be seen.

He had knitted his unburned brow, contracting the liquid gold pupil as if to reproduce for a second the hateful glint of the left eye, distorted by the horrid scar. The cold and cloudy sky, the black sky just like that black ocean, the white icebergs and the dull grey all around them… There never were any colours in this ice desert. Not even at dawn…

Yet the sea air was keeping him awake. The forge breath in his chest was warming up his blood; it was better here than inside. The wind, reckless and damp, was biting the scar on his eye: the cold expression, somewhat cruel, seemed to have solidified on his face. Crystallized by salt. What did he care? It had been more painful before. During the first weeks of his exile, he had been incapable of going on the deck, so sharp had been the sea spray's bite against his burned flesh. Two years later he still hated the sea. Sometimes.

And waiting for dawn, alone beside the black horn, rigid, his fists clenched on the guardrail so as to maintain an illusion of warmth, he looked at this huge expanse of water and fog. This hostile surface which, very far away, warm and shining, was crashing against his homeland's shores. A hint of reproach and bitterness in his eyes, picturing the countless war ships splitting the ocean, the waves indifferently crossing the frontier; why wasn't _he _allowed to come back…

His nails were biting into the flesh of his hands. He hadn't noticed he had become so tense. A wild hatred had seized him by the throat, nauseating: impulsively he punched the air several times, jerking into a fight stance. His lungs caught fire; a torrent of flames came from between his fingers, lighting up his ship's too black deck. Fleeting orange glints twinkled on the water. Some color, at last. A thin, bitter smile was dancing in the prince's golden eyes. His nerves were as tight as ropes. It would see, that awful lifeless land lost in the fog, how you greeted the sunrise.

And thus, his senses heightened by the upcoming daylight, he carried on his struggling against nothingness with a renewed energy.

The boat was pitching under his steps, slow and unconcerned, dragging him under after each blow as if inviting him to destroy the ocean. The sea and the sky were paling; a layer of fog was faintly shining on the horizon. Around him, the deck had become visible again. He hadn't seen the darkness part its claws. It was strange to be free.

His movements were gradually losing their aggressiveness now that the fire in his blood and breath allowed him to ignore the polar cold. Finally purified from the latent snow against his soul and flesh, his training was becoming slower and slower. Meditative.

The scar was pulsing like a living being over his face; the morning light was rushing up to his veins.

Free.

For a short while he forgot his hatred towards this foreign land, too white, too pale; he forgot his hostility towards those sumptuous iceberg shapes in the fog, looking like great frozen ladies. And he walked to the guardrail, gazing at the sun to starboard whose pale form was hardly visible through the mist.

It still was the sun. It still was dawn. And he, Zuko, was still alive, banished and scarred, still alone facing the gaping void dawn was imprinting in the black, forever open sky, and like every morning the young firebender got the same impression that he had just _understood, _a too brief revelation which sucked his breath before evaporating from his mind, like a dream, leaving him empty and confused in the heart of daylight.

Still giddy, he kept on staring at the horizon. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as he looked in the landscape for the source of another foreboding. Odd… The wind had died down; the South Pole was limpid and silent like a marble floor. The mist was clearing on the horizon, slowly revealing the never-ending ice desert, as far as his eyes could see, along with the poor pale shivering sun, on his right. Something was definitely wrong. For instance, wasn't it a little bit strange that they weren't heading towards the…

Zuko grit his teeth, the vague suspicion in his eyes turning instantly into anger.

The sun was on the starboard side.

Theoretically, if they intended to do their job with a minimum efficiency, the sailors were supposed to be able to locate the cardinal points by looking at the stars or sun's position.

Therefore, even taking into account the not inconsiderable thickness of their skull, the handful of incompetent fools acting as his crew should, according to the most elementary logic, be aware that when travelling _eastwards_, the sun ought to be facing them and _not _on the starboard side!

"What the heck are those idiots doing?" he exclaimed as he gave the guardrail a violent kick. "Are you crazy? We're heading north, there are _icebergs _over there!"

The sound of his boot striking the iron resonated a long time on the empty deck. Layers of fog were fraying around his legs, as if to drag him along before vanishing. For the moment, Zuko only felt anger. It was _daylight_. What were they up to? He rushed towards the superstructure as loudly as he could: there was no reason he should be the only one getting landed with the devil of a headache from the morning! Steam was coming from his nostrils and immediately vanishing in the frozen air, among the sky's indifferent greyness. The lookout wasn't at his post. Another one to yell at. The door of the control room slammed savagely against the wall.

Inside the cabin, the cold seemed to have crystallized as one coating of ice. It was bathed in a white muted light, similar to the hazy landscape distorting behind the portholes. Maybe it was this numbing cold, the feeling to have entered a mortuary, that froze him to the spot at first. Empty. No movement except for the ghostly dance of his own exhalations, hardly stirring the dead atmosphere. Nothing but the navigation tools, almost weld together by frost.

There was no sound to be heard, except for the rudder's slight grating every time it lazily oscillated, right or left, obviously enjoying its independence.

Brought out of his torpor, the young prince grabbed the wheel to keep it still. There was a hoarse wail, the handle shook slightly between his fingers, and then everything was silent. The frozen metal almost stuck to his skin: it had been a while since anyone had touched it. Exasperated, Zuko glared at the compass unused since the day before, the map in the middle of the room where they hadn't reproduced the distance covered during the night. Tiny flames went out of his clenched teeth.

"Is everyone _sleeping_ or something?" He was still screaming, struggling with the rudder. "We're drifting, bunch of fools, hurry up and get back to your posts! Where is lieutenant Jee?"

He would never exactly know how much time he spent vociferating like this, creating strangely hollow echoes against the metal walls. His calls were weak among the ocean's constant roar outside, and he received no response. Muttering swears, he resigned himself to releasing the rudder and raced towards the cabins, letting the irregular grating fill the room's emptiness _(I'm tilting to the right…) _and purchase him all the way to the corridors with its grotesque sniggering. _(I'm tilting to the left… There's no one in any more…)_

Dead.

If his uncle had yet again organized a music night and they were all out of it in their cabins, sleeping off that disgusting, almost pure alcohol which had been moulding for a year and a half at the back of a storeroom, they were all _dead_!

The young prince was now foaming flames. The clatter of his boots was deafening inside the empty corridors; the fire's hissing all around his face. He hadn't stopped screaming: _You think we have time to drift in this hell? Maybe you wanted to take a closer look at the icebergs? The first to appear is getting thrown overboard! _All those angry sounds almost succeeded in drowning out the sardonic lapping of the frozen sea surrounding his ship.

Carried away by his blind rage, Zuko didn't tire out remembering the way that led him to the lieutenant's cabin, nor checking whether he was still asleep. Anyway, given the racket the young man had been conscientiously making in his path for nearly a quarter of an hour, if Lieutenant Jee wasn't already awake, it meant he had gone into a coma and would stay that way until midday at least.

And since Lieutenant Jee was a sober individual, the most likely explanation was that he was being completely led on. With that thought, Zuko broke the door open.

It hadn't been locked; his momentum nearly threw him on the floor. A tongue of flames licked the ceiling with a sort of growl; the fire scent accompanying his anger. The prince had just found his balance again, had already screamed his subordinate's name along with the first insult that went through his head, when his voice died away in his throat.

And suddenly there was nothing.

No clatter of boots against the metal floor, no screams, no growling of his home element, not even the sea's gloomy voice. Nothing to fill the silence which, since his waking, had been weighing over the ship like a giant corpse. He felt his fingers grasp the door frame, the rough edges imprinting on his flesh.

The cabin was empty.

The blanket had been thrown randomly on the brown mattress. There was an open chest in a corner: a crumpled shirt was letting a sleeve hang inches above the ground. The veteran's armour was lying not far away. It was pretty messy, for such a bare room. He had never cared about the way lieutenant Jee dealt with his quarters, but still…he had always seemed meticulous to him. A little _too _meticulous, perhaps. He didn't forget the unpleasant feeling, sometimes, of that man watching him with a muted disapproval, like some object left in the wrong place, _you fool, what business is it of yours…_

And where the hell _was_ he?

His heartbeats were reverberating all the way to his clenched fists. His breathing was halting from having run so much. The floor pitched sluggishly to the rhythm of the waves, the cold and unmoving air weighed like a shroud. It was so silent.

What on earth was going on here…

His blood was buzzing against his temples, louder and louder, so much that he thought he could hear the rudder's sardonic grating once again. _There is no one in… __**Shut up!**_

Convulsively, he slammed the door shut, without precisely knowing why it had to be closed. Maybe in order to trap inside the anxiety lurking behind his consciousness' threshold, and he started running again inside the ship's entrails. His breathing was accelerating; sparks were dancing between his teeth, and their furious heat seemed to unfreeze his voice:

"You think that's clever to play hide-and-seek? If nobody has come to handle the rudder in twenty seconds, we'll get it settled with an Agni Kai!"

The corridors were passing him by in a blur, a never-ending succession of doors, all the same. And as he went past he opened them all angrily, slowing down just long enough to see that there was no one in, yet again. Where…were they? The Fire Nation armour felt heavier against his chest than it had been at dawn, and despite the fire raging between his ribs, little by little, a strange coldness was worming its way inside his bones. He tore down stairs, raced along a low and dark corridor; _it is warmer in the engine room. Perhaps… _He jumped into the void, ignoring the ladder separating the two levels. He also ignored the pain of his burning legs as they took the impact, kept on running, incessantly screaming, haunted by a multitude of plaintive echoes, the only things bothering to answer.

It was warmer in the engine room alright. Some three-quarters-emptied bottle set on a box beside a tea kettle and the chipped cups even indicated that they had gathered there quite recently. The young prince stayed still for a moment, out of breath, watching the makeshift installation as if he expected to see his men appear from between the planks. Finally he was able to move again, and he stretched out his hand, oddly hesitating before touching the tea kettle's side. The ceramic was cold. It had probably been used the day before.

Just like the navigation tools, in the control room…But they couldn't have all vanished into thin air during the night, damn it!

A low sizzling noise made him lift his head. The furnace was filled with ashes, and Zuko noticed with exasperation that the fire inside, glowing red between the metal fangs without bringing light into the room, was hardly strong enough to keep the ship moving onwards. They didn't even bother taking care of that… He hatefully punched the air once, twice, with an odd feverishness, and then dozen of times, ripping the heat from his arms as if to hold back a scream, until the temperature given off by the machine had become unbearable.

That was at least one job done.

Beads of sweat were running down his temples. His arms fell by his sides. He staggered back a few paces, each of his breaths letting out a hissing noise. As if hypnotised, he didn't take his eyes off the fuming mouth, off the embers kindling a nefarious glow in the dark. A vague nauseous feeling was eating into his stomach. His legs were trembling under the weigh of his own body.

Lieutenant Jee, the lookout, the cartographer, the machinists…

Where could they be?

…And could it mean that…

A spasm, and he was moving again, running back up the ship's levels as fast as he could, as if in order to escape his own thoughts. The clatter of his boots was deafening among the metal. His armour was too tight round his chest; he was suffocating. There was one cabin, just one he hadn't opened in his wake. Out of respect, perhaps. Or out of some ridiculous superstition. Breathing erratically, he stopped in the middle of a corridor.

The square door, squat and without ornament, wasn't any different from the previous ones. The teenager put a pale hand over the iron partition. Cold. Just like everything here. There was no sound to be heard: even the ocean had stopped whispering around the ship. For a moment, he considered knocking_. _Yet all he was able to do was lick his chapped lips, painfully: the taste of salt and metal burned his throat and stomach like an acid. With the palm of his hand, he pushed the door open.

-…Uncle?

His voice was hoarse from having screamed too long. Through the darkness engulfing the cabin, he could vaguely make out a crouched form on the bed, unmoving. For a horrible moment Zuko strived to believe that it was his firebending master, still asleep, but safe, this indolent old man who since almost three years was all the family he had left.

However a mocking flame had just bloomed in his open palm, almost without his knowing, and brought light to the empty blanket, chaotically rolled up in the mattress' corner. Everything else was fine. Warm shadows were stretching on the crimson tapestries, moving like his candlelight. Some of Iroh's awful smell even lingered inside the room; that smell the young prince had never had the guts to complain about out loud. But still, it couldn't be normal that the feet of Ozai's brother, the feet of the _Firelord's _brother, stunk more than any peasant's stable, could it?

Outside, the ship was making headway among the icebergs, to the north. Without any crew to navigate it. Zuko couldn't breathe any more; something was squashing his chest, crushing his lungs. His hands had slowly started moving, loosening the buckles keeping his armour in place. It hit the floor with a clear sound, heavy with echoes, like a giant shell. The young prince had let himself slid down the wall, overcome by vertigo. That sick feeling lingered in the pit of his stomach. The metal was cold against his back and the nape of his neck. His eyes kept searching the small room, stupidly.

There was nothing. Nothing at all. The flame had died between his half-parted fingers; the cabin was once again plunged in darkness. Steam formed with each one of his exhalations, almost translucent; the vault-like cold was slowly crawling up to his spine. His fingers were trembling, he felt queasy, he didn't understand anything. _Agni, where were they all?_

…Where was his uncle?

Several levels below, the fuming furnace was making the whole ship drone; yet thesubdued vibration against his arms and legs only succeeded in emphasizing the awful silence beating down on his shoulders; dreadful and crushing silence reverberating in several tons of _empty_ metal…

_There's no one in…_

The rudder!

Zuko clenched his fists, fire flickering at the pit of his nails. The ship was still drifting! They were going to crash into an iceberg! He feverishly searched the cabin. Those fools _couldn't _stay hidden, not in such a situation. However all the room was showing him were frozen shadows, and his uncle's foul scent. His heart was pounding wildly against his temples, exploding up to his phalanx. Sick.

What the hell were they all up to?

This last question kept coming back to torment him, simmering at the back of his mind, quiet, painfully sardonic, not unlike a threat. The firebender conceived a genuine hatred for it; he jerked on his feet and punched blindly the ice-cold wall which had supported him, screaming as loud as his scratched voice would allow him:

"What's come over you to disappear, bunch of fools? You think we have time for this? Someone has to handle that damn rudder!"

But in the empty cabin, Iroh didn't answer; the penetrating silence sounded like a lecture. As if his uncle had been able to watch him taking it out on the harmless wall, arms crossed a few feet away from him, the disapproval on his serious face mingled with a slight amusement he could never totally part from his kind features, it seemed.

Sometimes, during training, when Zuko found another reason to complain, Iroh could stay still in that way for hours. Letting his nephew's anger subside from itself, like a spatter of lava, until there was nothing left before him but the essentials.

"_You already know what you have to do, don't you?"_

His fist had come to a halt against the metal, trembling a little, clenched so tightly that his fingernails threatened to cut into the flesh of his palm. He breathed in and out, several times. Let the simple sentence slowly fill his mind, until his heartbeats ceased to shake his whole body, until the shivers running down his limbs and the suffocating pain in his stomach died down. Until the fear (for it was well and truly fear) loosened at last the hold it had over his senses.

The words were resonating softly between his ribs. Iroh's voice was gradually becoming recognizable. It even felt like he actually could sense the old man's presence by his side, his smile lit up by a triumphant yet serene expression. So when the young prince turned around at last, he was almost surprised to find nothing but a cold empty room, plunged in darkness.

The muscles of his arms tensed up. _Why… _but this time Zuko didn't take his rage out on his surroundings, and he didn't call upon his fire but to relight the corridors' torches as he quickly went up the ship's levels, ignoring the little glowing eyes following him like as many nocturnal creatures.

He had always followed his uncle's advices better when he wasn't there, anyway…

His cabin's door was still half-open. Zuko stopped inside just long enough to search one of his chests, pulling from under a clothes pile several ropes, as thin and sturdy as adders, along with some hooks of different sizes; pushing away with a feverish impatience the other objects more or less licit that were hiding there.

If he really was to correct this giant skeleton's trajectory all by himself, he couldn't spend the whole day glued to the rudder.

The hooks were clinking against his waist, punctuating his step with a monotonous rhythm. The torch kept lighting themselves before him, unveiling a long succession of desert corridors. He was trying hard not to think. There were other things to do than think. He had to calculate the new trajectory and reproduce on the map the distance covered during the drift: the last thing he needed was getting lost in the middle of the polar ocean. Watch around in search of a ship, send out a distress signal. Inspect the machinery to make sure nothing had frozen since the day before… Then what?

The control room, bathed in a sickly, bluish light, was colder than ever. The rudder seemed to be taunting him with its tinny grating: Zuko's first impulse was to rush at it and tie it to shut it up. This time again, his uncle's voice stopped his gesture; calm and reasonable, unbearably reasonable, yet he let it express itself at the back of his mind.

He couldn't take the risk of getting lost. He had to reproduce the route on the map first. And before that, to calculate where exactly they were heading. The hooks hit the ground with an exasperated clinking.

That was the _cartographer's _job…

He grabbed the compass, half-frozen on an instrument panel. The metal was so cold it scratched his skin, so he pinned it spitefully before him. A whole quarter of an hour to remember how they used that thing (fifteen degrees northwards. Or was it seventeen?); fifteen more minutes to draw the distance covered on the map (they had gotten closer to the land; didn't they risk colliding with submerged icebergs without even noticing?), clinging all this time to the imaginary voice of his uncle. It was the only thing that was still keeping him from cracking up completely and reducing the whole cabin to ashes.

Then, seize the rudder and push it away with all his might, as if driven by a personal grievance. That kind of fierce satisfaction at hearing the ship's terrific moan as it cleaved through the ocean to face the sun, the shower of foam lashing against the portholes, the jolt that almost threw him against a wall. With a sour smile, he wound the rope a twentieth time round the wheel and handles, strengthening his work with hooks he wedged among the knots. Acting, at least; being able to put an end to this awful grating, scoffing at his helplessness… His hands were moving relentlessly, frantic yet precise, as if in a trance.

…_Where had__ they all gone? _He gritted his teeth. Watch around for a ship, send out a distress signal. There were other things to do than thinking.

…_They couldn't have just vanished… _Don't think, you idiot!

The rudder was only moving in small jerks now, barely shaking the net of ropes. That would do for the moment. Zuko broke off just long enough to blow on his numb fingers, letting the tiny flames between his lips revive his knuckles.

Then he started running once again.

His echoing steps were resounding in all the empty boat. Gloomy and violent. Too insistent in the huge, attentive silence. For an absurd second, the young prince seriously considered taking off his boots. Stupid, really. Did he think it clever, in the situation he was in, to pace barefoot a ship travelling across the South Pole in the depths of winter? His running was leading him almost mechanically to the room the telescope was stored in _(perhaps one of the things he had used the most in three years, that damn metal tube which never showed him anything). _He was dragging it outside, as fast as he could, but the thoughts, the doubts and tortuous questionings kept appearing and vanishing at the back of his mind. Even his uncle's calm voice couldn't completely dismiss them.

All the cabins had been in an unusual mess. But they couldn't have fought there, not without him hearing them. It was another kind of mess.

Hurry.

_Don't think, I tell you!_

His fingers were shaking now, and he nearly destroyed the device while adjusting it to the south. A pale sun had risen above the horizon. The sky was the colour of ice. The sea was as still as a mirror, as far as he could see, only disturbed by a few icebergs outlines, far away. He slowly lowered his face to the telescope's mask. His eyes were tightly shut.

He hadn't checked whether the smaller, easier to manoeuvre motor boats they used for emergency withdrawals were all still in the holds… _STOP THAT!_

Suddenly angry, he made himself part his eyelids and feverishly search the strips of fog undulating above the waves. To the south. Then to the west. Then to the east and to the north, where he could make out the land among huge ice blocks. His hands were convulsively clenched on the device. Nothing but snow and water…

He had gone to sleep around midnight. Had been up way before sunrise.

If they had intended to…leave the ship during his sleep…if they had intended to _flee…_Their boat should have still been visible, shouldn't it?

He was cold again. This was absurd. This wasn't possible. And yet, there hadn't been any attack… The ship was vibrating dully under his boots, sardonic, as if reminding him that several yards underneath there still were dark rooms bore in iron. Empty, ice-cold, similar to the multiple compartments of a gigantic mortuary. _The holds…_

In his haste, he nearly forgot to send out the distress signal. The red rocket cut through the sky, like a giant star; but who could see it from such a distance?

Once again, he was tearing down the stairs. His stomach was churning with anxiety, making him feel giddy. Sick. A cold sweat drenched his forehead and the back of his neck; shivers were running down his spine. He would have liked to remember his uncle's words once again, to know what to do, but he was now afraid of hearing him. Like the mouth of a nightmare, the corridors were swallowing and throwing him down, down to the bottom of the ship.

He wasn't sure he wanted to be there. Agni, he wasn't sure of anything, any more. He stopped, and the exhaustion crashed on him like a wave, darkening his eyesight. For a few seconds he stayed disorientated in the dark, lost among the beatings of blood against his temples.

He almost forgot he was about to verify whether his men and his uncle had abandoned him in the midst of the polar ocean…

A little flame was quivering in the crook of his palm. Very slowly, he looked round the holds, inspecting every room; six boats stored there, none of them missing. They hadn't been used for several days.

It was particularly cold, inside those rooms. And dark. Only the hull separated him from the freezing, moving ocean; the irregular rocking of the waves was beginning to make him feel seasick.

No attack. No flight. No other ships around. The young prince was peering into the dark corners, exasperated. The absurdity of the whole thing was getting on his nerves. Yet the silence's pressure was weighing like a vice against his temples: he couldn't scream.

Where did those darn idiots manage to get lost? _At the bottom of the ocean?_

This was a stupid hypothesis, of course, not worth taking into account. Zuko spent the rest of the day chaotically searching the whole ship, inspecting even some tiny disused rooms, stuck at the far bottom of the holds, whose existence he had never suspected in three years. He must have been really keyed up, for ice-cold shivers were still running down his spine, making his teeth chatter, intensifying every time that same absurd idea crossed his mind, _at the bottom of the ocean… _So he was trying his hardest not to think at all.

Many hours had passed in that way when, as he opened yet another door, he was greeted by a chorus of raucous roaring. The komodo rhinos, whipping their tail moodily against the wall, were waging their heavy horned heads in front of the empty mangers and loudly moaning about him.

Zuko immediately made it his duty to bellow louder than them all, listing all the insults that came into his head, for as long as he could, even trying out a few flowery swears he had heard in some ports and whose meaning he wasn't really sure of. Screaming loud enough to chafe his vocal cords that he was _not _some darn farmhand, that it was the last of his concerns to know whether a bunch of moronic creatures would die of thirst or starve, and that for all he cared, they could as well imitate the other traitors and throw themselves overboard the next night!

When the door shut at last with a fierce slam, there was nothing to be heard inside but the conscientious sound of chewing, as the rhinos tore big cuts of meat to pieces. Steam was coming out from between the young prince's lips with every breath; he couldn't quite suppress an imperceptible smile.

Too relieved to know he wasn't the only living being trapped in this ice-cold prison drifting in the middle of the seas.

But the night was falling outside. The trajectory… Once again, he had to struggle against the compass which, impervious to his fits of rage, never seemed to indicate quite the expected direction. He had to make three attempts before he could draw the correct distance. Fists clenching on the table's edge, he glared at the little black line which had just wormed its way between two branches of land. They were too close to the coasts.

The faint grating of the rudder sounded like an unbearable roar of laughter. They had to move over to south-east.

So he made himself move again, untie the ropes, battle the frozen metal sticking to his pale hands, endeavouring not to communicate too abrupt movements to the rudder, for fear of throwing the whole ship against an iceberg.

Then Zuko went outside to check the land's proximity, a bit slower: his boots had become strangely heavy. The moon brought a dismal light on the deck; salty sea spray was crystallizing on his skin. The ship was creaking; the never-ending ocean, as black as ink, still calm, revealed a thin ribbon of snow on the horizon. There were no clouds left above him, nothing to keep what little warmth might have accumulated during the day. It seemed to the young firebender that his strengths themselves were coming out of his body to go up to the cold, bright stars, so numerous in the depths of darkness…

Overcome by vertigo, he had to grasp the guardrail in order to hold himself up. His legs were shaking; his throat was burning, clammy, as if he was going to throw up overboard any minute. Breathing deeply the ice-cold air, he spitefully glared at the twisting waves: he had no time to fall sick, darn it! Why on earth was he in such a state?

The thought occurred to him, then, that he hadn't eaten nor slept since dawn, when he had started running all over the ship's levels.

However, before he could ponder over it, he remembered that he should have inspected the machinery and searched for frost marks hours ago already. He immediately rushed inside, fire licking his fingers to revive his numb muscles.

He wasn't hungry anyway; nor tired.

He wasn't hungry either the next day at dawn, when he had finally made sure that all the machines were operational, exasperated by the never-ending length of piping that had passed before his eyes during the night. His stomach was in too tight of knots to eat anything. And he had to take care of the trajectory once again; had to note that, despite all his efforts, the boat was inexorably getting closer to the land, and that if he didn't hurry to make the skeleton slow down, he would soon be unable to direct it among the labyrinth that was now formed by the icebergs. So he must run to the furnace, and on the way rack his brains to remember how the crew usually carried out the decelerations.

Maybe it was better that way, after all: he felt lighter on an empty stomach. Quicker to react, even, his movements feverish yet strangely precise, as if fasting had plunged him into some kind of trance.

What's more the vertigo overcoming him every now and then prevented him from having too many unpleasant thoughts.

So he wasn't hungry all the second day long, until the sun set once again behind the ship. The young prince had just fed the komodo rhinos, incapable of yelling at them because his parched throat couldn't produce a single sound any longer; he had had to force himself to drink. He was cold now, terribly cold. And maybe, he was starting to feel a little bit tired.

The ship was still droning around him, taunting him with its tons of empty metal, with those thousands of hollow echoes following each of his steps, with the gruesome mystery surrounding those disappearances, with the oppressing silence gnawing at his nerves. Zuko had hurried along the reddish corridors, and had shut himself away in his cabin.

The only room where it seemed somewhat normal to be alone…

In silence he rekindled all of the torches, until the darkness had been lighted up with orange glints and had lost its distant hostility. Once again he rummaged in his chest, this time ignoring the ropes, the knives, the gloves and the dark clothes populating the bottom like outcasts, and he pulled out the warmest fabric he could find: a scarlet winter cloak trimmed with gold, which undulated around his ankles when he clasped it over his shoulders.

He couldn't rest for long, he decided as he knelt to struggle against his boots. Two, three hours at the most. Then, he would have to keep a check on the surroundings once again, and rectify the trajectory. And everything else…

He couldn't risk letting the boat get lost among the ice floes, after all.

_But you won't be able to put yourself under such __a pace forever, Prince Zuko, _his uncle was calmly retorting, in his reasonable tone. The teenager groaned, pushing away his boots and letting himself drop on the brown mattress.

_Shut up, you __old fool, _he thought as hard as he could, his eyes tightly shut. Considering the situation he was in, slipping into schizophrenia was really the least of his worries. _You should have been there to tell me what to do…_

The air was cold, as still as a grave, worming its way up to his bones. Shivering, he tucked his legs close to his body and wrapped the cloak around his knees. Sitting in that way, he momentarily forgot all about his dignity as a prince, or the fact that he was supposed to sleep, and he curled himself up inside the silent cabin, like a child trying to escape from a nightmare.

He was already counting the minutes left in his head before he would have to get up yet again, and struggle against a ship lost at sea and against a hundred lugubrious questionings.


	3. And may madness finish you off 1

_To Honour the moment_

I would like to thank Avocadolove for her awesome job as a beta-reader (she's the one that makes my english readable), my rewievers, and basically all the people who keep reading this fic in spite of my helpless laziness. Since the second chapter's french version is awefully long, I decided to cut it in three parts. I hope it won't bother you too much.

* * *

Chapter 2: _And may madness finish you off _(Part 1/3)

The third day was the same as the previous one, only more chaotic. When at last Zuko allowed himself to stop and think the dim, pale sun was touching the sea in the horizon. This time, he couldn't shut himself up in his cabin. The silence was too heavy inside, stressing the feeling he had of having been buried under the dead metal. What's more the torches wouldn't stop going out in the corridors; they did it slowly, when he was busy elsewhere, he couldn't understand why, and it was getting on his nerves.

The sea breeze was stirring the tail of his coat in a light rustle. It was a quiet sound, the only one that could still distract him from the ocean's eerie murmur, and from the perpetual rumbling rising from the ship and vibrating against the sole of his feet. It was as if the boat was breathing, or dying, or sniggering secretly at the crew's disappearance. Worn out, the young prince tightened the cloth around his shoulders, staring resolutely at the open sea and at the icebergs slowly passing him by in ever-increasing numbers, like as many sentinels. _Too close._

The air was painful to inhale, heavy with frost, and so salty it made him feel sick. Zuko had spent most of the day scratching fire out of his blood and breath, so as to rid the machines of the frost which had gathered on the pipe joints, then to rekindle the fire inside the mocking mouth of the furnace. He felt oddly empty now, frozen to his very bones, his throat dry and his head fuzzy. He gritted his teeth.

How much time could he keep going at this rate?

The huge icebergs surrounding him formed fantastical landscapes as far as the eye could see, and seemed gradually more threatening. The clouds had banked up above him, like a great colourless fog merging the sea into the sky.

The ocean was still calm, the visibility still good, but not necessarily for very long.

A crack jerked him out of his thoughts; a jolt shook the front deck, making him temporarily lose his balance. Muttering swears, Zuko hurried towards the prow. Rocked by wavelets, a cracked block of ice was lazily drifting away from their path. Another one he hadn't seen in time. Some smaller fragments were scattering on the water. How big had been that thing before the impact?

Without thinking about his physical exhaustion, he grabbed the guardrail and let himself hang over the edge to examine the hull. Straight away the movement turned his stomach, and for a second he lost all bearings. The sea spray was whipping his shaven head, burning the hideous scar on his flesh; the ship was having trouble finding its balance and was jolting him against its metal side. A wave of vertigo made him shiver from head to toes. The sky was darkening along with the sea. Everything was stirring, reeling, twisting chaotically. He couldn't tell up from down anymore, nothing but the black chasm about to engulf him.

With a jerk he hurled himself aboard, staggered a bit on the unstable deck, before finally letting himself slide down the prow, short of breath.

The metal was cold against the back of his neck. The front deck was swelling up and down, sickly, at the pace of the waves. The young prince clenched his fists against the ground, his nails scorched by iron. How he hated this all… The furnace was vibrating all the way to his bones, filling the emptiness and the nervous exhaustion of his own body.

Why couldn't he just stop it, make it _shut up _once and for all? This damn skeleton was sending him to his death in the midst of a frozen ocean…

The sun had sunk below the horizon, and along with the night a black depression had fallen down on his shoulders. The teenager stayed prostrate on the floor, turning his back on the course, merely pulling down the hood of his coat over his head in a vain attempt at protecting his skin, or maybe his mind, from the cold's slow wear. Broken and drained.

He hadn't noticed any crack on the hull: a few bulges at the most, where the collision had occurred. Yet for all that he couldn't be positive that the ship had emerged unscathed _(and that he had no way of knowing because, damn it all, that was the __**machinists' **__job!). _Avoiding all those ice blocks had become completely unrealistic, anyway, now that they were so close to the coast.

Now that the South Pole had gripped him with its bluish landscapes, frozen like a fantastical necropolis.

In the black sky a star had just appeared, haughty and cold between the clouds. The wind was whistling a shrill moan against his ears, carrying the scent of ice and numbing his senses. He curled himself up tighter.

The atrocious feeling that nothing, absolutely nothing was alive in this world…

Sooner or later he would lose control. All that empty metal would go and crash against an iceberg, creak against the ice, protest in vain. It would be smashed to pieces and abandoned to its fate, like the damn ghost ship it had been for three days.

As for him…

Zuko clenched his fists, an dmade himself inhale the dead atmosphere, as deeply as he could; lifted up his own body, heavy, so heavy and cold, almost frozen against the prow. Forced the fire to rekindle inside his lungs; forced the energy flow to circulate through his empty stomach and his knotted entrails; forced his fingers and toes to move again; forced his muscles to tense as he wildly delivered punches and kicks in the air, bringing a brief light in the dark. His mouth was clammy, his throat burning and dry, yet he had nothing to throw up. He coughed up flames.

_N__o way am I letting myself die like that. _The banished prince had stood up at last; a wisp of steam was coming out from between his chapped lips. He clenched his fists on his cloak and, facing several miles of snow, gave it a challenging look.

Zuko was a firebender. As such, there were two types of deaths he would simply not hear about: freezing and drowning.

And the fact that he was trapped in some damn _empty _ship drifting in the South Pole's seas in the midst of winter without any crew to be seen (maybe those fools really _had_ thrown themselves overboard, after all) wouldn't change anything to his resolution.

Suddenly the course of his reflection broke off; he gripped the guardrail with a start and feverishly searched the darkened scenery. There, among the iceberg's shadows…He narrowed his eyes; his pupils widened in the golden iris and, for a second, he thought he could see once again a tiny wisp of smoke, just a small vibration blurring the ice sculptures.

Forgetting all about his exhaustion, the teenager ran inside, lightning the torches angrily in his wake. The embers blinked lazily with their little red, nefarious eyes, but he paid them no attention. He dragged the telescope to the foredeck and adjusted it as fast as he could, looking every five seconds for the invisible point of his discovery, as if fearing that a whole section of the land would vanish in the dark.

Through the lens of the telescope, there was no more room for doubt: smoke was steadily rising from the ground. Tilting the scope, he let his gaze go down to a round edifice made of snow (he believed it was called an igloo). A few tents, and yet another heap of snow, irregularly piled up so as to form what looked like some kind of very small fortifications.

His heartbeats slowed. The beginning of confusion was written on his face as he straightened up.

A village lost in the midst of the polar ocean… It could only be the Southern Water Tribe. Or what was left of it. Enemies of the Fire Nation, in any case. His unburned brow furrowing, he let the objective wander slowly on the coast as he studied the landscape. It wasn't like a handful of refugees could be of any help, anyway…

_Your current situation is not so different from theirs, Prince Zuko, _his uncle retorted, and he could almost _hear_ the amused smile in his imaginary voice. The teenager groaned in frustration. He was absent-mindedly considering a vast snow plateau some hundred yards away from the village, delimited by glaciers that hided it from sight.

_So what?_ Those peasants hated him. No matter how disastrous his situation was, they wouldn't help him. And he certainly wasn't going to try and _move _enemies of his homeland!

He dragged the device inside lest it would freeze on the deck, but chose to keep a more manageable telescope on his belt. His head was spinning somewhat, his throat was dry, but for now he couldn't think about drinking. He walked among the empty, silent corridors, so dark that even the poor ice-cold light of the control room, growing weaker and weaker as the night fell, was a relief to him. The rudder hardly quivered under the ropes net. He had slowed down the ship's rapid course as much as he could: the new pace allowed him to navigate with some precision. In compensation, the efforts he had to expend in order to swivel the gigantic skeleton had become frightening.

Maybe the rudder's sudden resistance meant, above all other things, that Zuko was seriously beginning to lose his strength. But he didn't want to think about that.

His fingers were thoughtfully redrawing the black, fragile line which represented his journey. Trapped between two bands of ice. Way too close to the coasts… For a moment he looked for the village, but in vain: it was a recent map, and they had erased the Southern Water Tribe since it had been crushed by the opposing offensives.

The young prince clenched his fists. Such idiots… Nevertheless he tried to localize that great snow plateau he had noticed a moment ago. Steam came out of his lips and nostrils each time he breathed out; yet again a bit more of his energy drifting away. The frozen silence seemed to penetrate his very bones. Maybe it was in fact the silence itself, this slow, heavy and implacable _death, _which lighted off all the torches in the corridors one by one…

He made an impatient gesture to dismiss the absurd speculation. With a formal rigidity, he stuck the brush between his fingers and circled a portion of land, very close to his ship, surrounded by glaciers like a cove by cliffs.

How many could there be, those foreigners hiding in tiny tents who managed to survive in such a land? About twenty? For a brief moment he wondered what this people might look like. They said so many things about the Water Tribes… A black skin whipped by cold and salt. Weird slanting, ice-coloured eyes…

He didn't really need to see _extra_ ice, thank you very much, he thought in bad temper. Harassed by the mortuary silence, the firebender went back outside, where at least the wind whistled at his ears and where the cold, moving against his skin like a great blanket of fog, maintained the illusion of life.

The frost-filled air grazed his hands as he heaved himself up to the lookout post. The ladder's rungs were drenched by sea spray, and the metal was almost sticking to his flesh. Once at the top of the ship, he had to summon his inner fire once again in order to reanimate his fingers and get rid of some beginnings of chilblains. The forge breath raged, white-hot between his limbs. A feeling of vertigo echoed in all his empty body as the flames, bit by bit, ate into his deteriorating stamina.

Suddenly, Zuko wondered what would become of a firebender who wouldn't be able to keep his inner fire going, any longer.

_How would he be different from those hideous ice sculptures?_

Shaking his head, he pulled the telescope from his belt. Yet another senseless thought. Did he find it entertaining to waste his time like that? His face tensed by focusing, he spotted the wisp of smoke, the tiny village, and finally the ice plateau slowly coming closer. The young prince was already trying to measure the angle and distances by the naked eye. It wasn't such a bad place: a flat plane, clearly empty, about a hundred yards wide, so there was little risk of the ship crashing against a glacier.

Provided that he hurried and brought it about…

His heartbeats had become faster. It was difficult now to take his eyes off the refugees' camp, or off this small parcel of white land. For a moment, he struggled to find another pretext for not going there. None came to mind. He couldn't even remember the previous ones. Nothing to help him ignore his resolution.

He was going to moor the ship near the village. He had been determined from the very moment he had caught a glimpse of this light vibration silhouetted on the sky, this imperceptible quiver which, perhaps, looked like a wisp of smoke. He would find a way to get away from this plight once he got there.

He had to.

Resigned, Zuko let his arms fall back. He remained a few more seconds at the top of the ship, staring forward, to the never-ending maze made of snow and ice sculptures which stretched before him, more and more complex, threatening. The wind lashed at his exposed body. The wall of flesh and limbs felt very thin, suddenly; unable to prevent the frost bite from putting out the fire in his lungs. Breathing out steam, he started to go down.

He had to stop this damn iron heap somewhere anyway, he thought gloomily. His fists were clenched, resolute. He felt better having something to do.

When he reached the deck, the darkness around him was almost total. The ship was vibrating under his boots like a dozing monster. The metal creature seemed huge all of a sudden. Very heavy. The young prince went back to the control room and grabbed the compass to measure their trajectory. He noticed that his hands were shaking and clenched them angrily on the device.

He had seen many dockings before. It wasn't _exactly _a new experience for him, for Agni's sake!

He had to urge himself back to work. His hands were quickly manipulating the compass, noting, manipulating again, with smooth and mindless gestures that started to reveal some dexterity. He was finally getting through the devices, it seemed: that was at least something. And it was getting easier to think without having to concentrate too much on the measures…

He didn't expect to carry through a perfect steerage: after all no one had bothered to _inform _him that he would one day have to navigate his ship on his own: he couldn't remember everything. He knew he had to anchor it, put out the furnace, and of course control the trajectory with the rudder to prevent any collision…

His hands froze, and became so tense that he almost snapped the brush between his fingers. The exhaustion weighing his muscles down was the only thing that prevented him from kicking the table.

The furnace was situated in the heart of the ship. Yet, he could only drop the anchor from the rear deck. Outside.

And the rudder was here, in the superstructure.

Zuko put a fuming hand to his face. The steam hissed against his ears like a snake. In his rage he browsed through the room, absurdly.

-I presume you're not going to miraculously reappear and do your _job_ for once in your miserable existence! He growled to the absent sailors, infuriated by the never-ending, taunting silence.

The crew didn't answer. Damn slackers. Only his uncle's voice, calm, always reasonable, advised him to eat and drink something before getting down to the job. He also offered tea, of course, but Zuko chose to ignore this last suggestion. Especially coming from a traitor who didn't even bother to be _there _in the flesh to get on his nerves.

He nearly rejected the two other pieces of advice while he was at it: he must hurry and bring the ship about before he missed the plateau, and he wasn't hungry anyway. However his recent fits of rage had dried out his throat, so he had to go down to the storeroom all the same. If he was going to waste his time, he might as well try and eat something.

His stomach was still knotted and painful since the first day, twisted by apprehension, by anger, or maybe by hunger itself. His thoughts weren't helping either. They were constantly coming back to the rudder, the furnace, the anchor, so stupidly far away from one another. It was impossible to go to three different places without failing the whole manoeuvre and rushing to his own death… His throat had locked. He could barely swallow a few mouthfuls of bread and dried meat, the only food he could look at without making him sick.

It was maddening: He had enough problems as it was without the action of feeding himself becoming an obstacle as well, damn it! The prince's mood had become execrable, when his eyes fell on the barrels against the opposite wall, brimming with fresh water.

Water…

The furnace was in the heart of the ship. Directly connected to the control room.

Perhaps he could…

Straight away any thought of food vanished from his mind, and the young firebender grabbed the first barrel he was able to lift. He only took the time to make sure it didn't contain alcohol: it was out of the question to fail everything because of such a stupid mistake. Then he carried the water all the way to the control room, put it against a wall, and turned resolutely to the rudder and the fantastical landscape behind the portholes, challenging.

To the left, he could make out several miles of snow and strangely-shaped glaciers, slowly passing him by. Little by little a flat portion of land was appearing in his field of vision. He pulled from his tunic a small pearl dagger, thin and shining, the one his uncle had offered him long ago. His hand clenched briefly on the hilt. In the darkness he could only remember the letterings vertically carved in the blade.

_Never give up without a fight_

In one quick gesture, he cut through the ropes immobilizing the rudder.

He had forgotten the caution he had shown the first days while manipulating the device for fear that the ship's speed would throw them against an iceberg. The little food he had been able to swallow was giving him an illusion of strength, and Zuko weighed with all his might on the handles and the wheel, heavily, did half a turn then another. Finally the giant carcass began to swivel, loudly protesting against the savage manoeuvre. Shattered ice blocks shook the hull, made him lose his balance. Yet the prince managed to cling to the rudder until the ship had made a ninety degree turn. Then he had to rectify the trajectory yet again, seizing the opposite handles and lowering them with difficulty, for the boat hadn't stopped turning and was threatening to head to the village.

Against all caution, he had to let go of the wheel to grab the barrel of drinking water (the drinking water could get lost; there was nothing but that in this filthy land) and to pour its content in the gap leading to the furnace, where the smoke came up to disperse outside. Only the anchor was left. In his situation, making things in the right order was the least of the teenager's worries. Without even making sure that a few litres had been enough to smother the weakened fire, he hurried to the rear deck, in the darkness. He kicked the lever, and the anchor burst a thin skin of ice to sink in the ocean.

The floor was shaken by a violent blast-wave, which almost threw him overboard. The ship was now slicing through the snow: the screeches of metal grating the frozen land in its wake were unbearable. All around him, almost translucent in the dark, enormous glaciers were inexorably coming closer. Another jolt nearly threw him to the floor. He stumbled towards the control room. It was strange to run on a surface that was running away on its own: it gave him the chaotic feeling that he was striving to escape the bluish sentries closing in on him like an army of ghosts.

Once inside, he was instantly swallowed by a lukewarm fog that engulfed all of his senses: the steam from the furnace. What a fool, he should have thought about it, he had the time to reprimand himself before being thrown against a panel board by yet another yaw.

Zuko straightened up as fast as his vertigo, his blindness and the pain in his side where a metal corner had thrust in his flesh would allow him. The roar of the hull ploughing the ground in its wake was drilling into his eardrums. Groping around him, he finally found the rudder. There was no way to tell which way he must turn the damn thing; all the portholes were opaque from steam. All he could do was cling to the handles to hold them still, huddled up among the deafening screeches and the chaotic yaws. His eyes were tightly shut, but what did it matter? He couldn't see anything in that fog…

He couldn't tell for how long he remained prostrate like that: a rougher jolt had made his head collide with the rudder, and he must have lost consciousness for a few minutes, for when he opened his eyes once again, the steam was clearing in the cabin. The floor was somewhat sloping to the right, but still. Everything was silent again.

Frozen to the bones, the young prince stood up with some difficulty, rubbing his shaven head where the rudder had left a dark bruise. He glared suspiciously at the floor, almost expecting it to crumble under his weight.

The water on the portholes was already starting to freeze: he couldn't see anything. Cautiously he went out to the darkness-engulfed deck. Clouds had invaded the sky, not yet threatening, but preventing the moon and the stars from bringing any light to the ground. Narrowing his eyes, Zuko could finally make out the outlines of glaciers. Some of them were very close; yet none had reached his ship. The engine seemed to have drawn some kind of curve before coming to a halt. The ship was dangerously tilting to the right, but stood nevertheless. It had remained in one piece and didn't even seem in too bad a state, all in all. The firebender let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding.

Behind him the sea was licking the cold white coasts in a series of sighs and vexed rumblings. The floor wasn't pitching under his boots any longer. The ocean couldn't reach him, couldn't engulf him anymore.

A heavy sound, like the wing of some nocturnal bird, made him lift his head. The Fire nation's flag was proudly flapping against the wind, at the top of the superstructure. In spite of the pitch darkness, the young prince thought he could make out his homeland's emblem.

Then, a victorious smirk broadened on his face, almost smug as he sized up the hostile landscape and looked at the fruits of his own job. He didn't fear the cold any longer. A wisp of steam was freely coming out from between his lips, melting the frost carried by the polar wind. His blood, filled with oxygen, was drumming against his fingers and temples. His adrenalin had made him forget his exhaustion.


	4. And may madness finish you off 2

_To Honour the moment_

Hi everyone! Sorry I'm taking so long translating. I'm going to have some important exam next week, and it kind of rub on my nerves... As always, thanks to Avocadolove for making my story readable, and to my readers for, well, reading it. :-)

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Chapter 2: _And may madness finish you off _(Part 2/3)

A little calmer now, he let his eyes sweep the glaciers hiding his ship from view. He couldn't see the village from where he was. The dark circle, formed by enormous sentries and by the sea's grim lapping, was really cutting him off. Almost like a cell. Furrowing his brows, he was barely able to make out a thin wisp of smoke rising from the ground some miles away.

It would take at least two hours to reach the camp on foot…

His eagerness was starting to cloud over. Of what use could they be? A handful of peasants who probably never had left this Agni-forsaken hole in all their existence… He didn't need to go and find _them_. He had to find his uncle, his crew, as quickly as possible… His heart tightened painfully in his chest at the thought of all of them still being alive, somewhere, lost in this ice desert. But how, why…

During those three chaotic days, he had done his best to not think about the lugubrious mystery surrounding their disappearance. The lack of sleep had helped, in a way…

However, now that he was stuck in the snow with no droning nor screeches of a mad ship to occupy his mind, all the hypothesis and sick apprehensions lashed out at him, more fiercely than ever.

Each theory was more nightmarish than the next, and none of them was even possible: his crew couldn't have been captured, couldn't have fled, couldn't have vanished into thin air. No plausible explanation came to mind, except for this absurd, alarming vision of group suicide that he wouldn't think about. In the end, he always came back to this retarded tale in which aquatic monsters drove the sailors mad with their beautiful songs, so they would throw themselves into the sea. But that was also stupid: even if such creatures really did exist, why on earth would he be the only one spared of all the crew? He had no way of knowing what kind of beasts populated the southern ocean anyway…

As if roused from a trance, he lifted his head and casted his eyes towards the wisp of smoke, resolutely.

_That was it._

These people had spent their whole life in the South Pole. The men from the Water Tribes were reputed all around the world to be outstanding sailors: they knew every current, every spirit that haunted this land. The ocean held no secret for them.

They might have already heard of such disappearances on their territory. They might know what had happened to his men. They might…

His nerves were on fire. This new hope seemed so tangible that only sheer willpower prevented him from leaving the ship at once and walking straight to the village. He leaned heavily against the guardrail, grasping the ice cold metal with one hand, and forced himself to cool down. He was slowly becoming aware of the shivers running down his back and legs, of a headache around the bruise on his temple, worsened by first signs of fever.

"_You have to rest, Prince Zuko_, said his uncle, his voice gentle yet brooking no reply. _Try to sleep. You are going to need your strength…"_

He supposed it wasn't absurd.

The furnace didn't make the ship vibrate anymore; from his cabin he couldn't hear the wind's murmur. The silence was complete, suffocating, and as heavy as a corpse. The four candles had fallen from the table during the manoeuvre and were now scattered on the floor. He didn't bother to replace them. His head was still hurting, and in spite of the blanket he had covered himself with he couldn't warm up. Maybe it was the pain, or the cold, or even this unmoving floor he wasn't used to any longer, after all those weeks living at sea, that kept him from falling asleep. His body and mind were bubbling over, and yet he was hardly able to keep his eyes open.

His head was buzzing with vague, painful thoughts, broken by nightmares each time he would get lost on the threshold of sleep. He kept coming back to the people of the South Pole, to the intense, improbable hope he had of finding a lead that would get him to his men. To his uncle…

But why would these people help him? He was their enemie's _prince_. Wouldn't they be looking forward to seeing him freeze to death on their land, all alone? He couldn't imagine them other than indifferent. His exhausted mind pictured them huge and motionless, cruel; not unlike the glaciers surrounding him in the dark… Strange spirits were coiling up round their arms, like snakes of smoke; pale, glassy stares were penetrating to his very bones, he couldn't move, and little by little his skin was getting covered with frost…

He had to wake up to think straight again. Those people were refugees, for Agni's sake, _peasants_, not mythological monsters… In his apprehension, he straightened up on the mattress, rubbing his temples and giving up on getting any rest. The torch fire was growing weaker; the cabin was slowly sinking into an eerie, red-glowing darkness. His little furniture had already been swallowed. The whole room seemed to be closing up on him like a trap. So small among empty iron…

But the Water Tribe had no way of _knowing _that this ship was empty, would they?

His heartbeat was getting faster. Exactly. No matter the severity of his situation, they couldn't just _deduce_ that he had come to their land abroad a phantom ship, alone and vulnerable. And even if they were weird enough to suspect such a thing, no one was going to venture into his ship and make sure it really was filled with an army of firebenders ready to burn them alive… His excitement had increased; the young prince couldn't stay still any longer. He had to throw back the blanket: the room's rigid silence was getting unbearable.

So if he came to them and pretended to be some sort of messenger…it would seem normal to forbid them to go near his ship. And it wouldn't seem absurd that no Fire Nation soldier would be seen on their territory as long as his conditions were observed…

It reeked of blackmail. Of bluff, even. Yet he didn't have time to waste feeling remorse: he had to find his crew back, and quick. If they really were roaming with no resources about this hellish land…

Even the carpets were cold under the sole of his feet as he paced up and down.

In order to gain the information he needed without sounding too suspicious…he would just have to pretend that he was investigating on the disappearance of another crew, on another ship, not far from here. It could be the goal of his ship's expedition. He would offer them safety in exchange for their cooperation, and no one would take the risk of doubting his word…

He stopped at the centre of the room. His heart was racing; steam was going out of his nostrils with the energy he was expending to warm up his body. He could face them. Right now, if he wanted to. The torch fire was going out: in the growing darkness, the slight hissing of the embers sounded like an inhuman breath. As if some dark creatures were lying in wait in the corners of the cabin, spying on him. He shook his head disdainfully, yet left the room.

Trying to sleep really was doing him no good.

In desperation he decided to go and feed the komodo rhinos: he might as well do something that would be at least a little bit useful. Deal with _real _living beings instead of those feverish apparitions.

Stave off his devouring need for a human presence, at last, after this utter, three-days-long, never-ending loneliness…

One could hear the racket of the loose boxes from several corridors away: the rhinos hadn't enjoyed the mooring too much. They were now roaring wildly and trying their earnest to demolish the walls. The whole room was shuddering under the assaults of a dozen horned foreheads, aggravating the prince's headache. The hoarse groans increased twofold when he came in, filled with a tone that sounded unpleasantly like reproach. A few flames appeared between the knuckles of his clenched fists.

Those damn creatures hadn't done a thing to make the mooring easier: if there was someone in this crazy ship who had a reason to scream and complain, it was _him!_

So it was with a great many swears and vociferations that the teenager went inside each of the loose boxes and refilled the mangers, pushing bad-temperedly away the hard, huge flanks that threatened to crush him against a wall. The familiar sound of their young master's screams, as well as the slices of raw meat at mouth's reach, were gradually calming the animals. It was in a relative silence that Zuko reached the last, most spacious loose box of the room.

The rhino inside, a powerful creature whose thick skin scratched the hands like a granite wall, had remained stoic in midst of the widespread hysteria. It moved graciously out of the young prince's way, yet didn't seem to mind poking at his chest with its imposing muffle so as to sniff at the food. An unimpeachable discipline and a greedy guts: his uncle often had insinuated, when he really wanted to aggravate him, that his nephew had a lot to learn from this animal. Zuko seized one of its horns, exasperatingly:

"You'd better _not _slobber on me, he growled as menacingly as he could, fixing his eyes on his mount's black one. Still, Orm."

He had named it on his twelfth birthday, when the animal had been offered to him. Orm, the legend's dragon-god, mistaken for a fuming volcano when asleep. Azula had found it ridiculous, of course. Yet the rhino had never complained about being called after a mythological creature; the single syllable rolled in a pleasant way on the firebender's tongue, as if he had bitten into embers. In any case Orm was one of the few elements from his former life that he had been allowed to keep with him in exile.

The name he had chosen to give _his _komodo rhino was none of his sister's business.

Obedient, the animal didn't move its colossal head as its meal was served. He was now slavering copiously in his manger and gulping down the meat almost without chewing. Arms crossed, Zuko leant against the dark, stone-hard frill, and watched the rhino stuff itself with a mix of annoyance and unexplainable appeasement.

"I'm going to a refugees' village. To ask them for help."

He was speaking slowly, taking advantage of the animal's presenceto think out loud.

"They are peasants, and enemies of the Fire Nation, but they're familiar with this place. They may know where all those idiots are."

Orm didn't stop chewing; nevertheless a small black eye was set in motion on his face of stone and considered its master, patient and attentive.

"It can't be more stupid than talking to a war mount anyway, can it?" Zuko went on with some irritation.

Nonetheless the teenager stayed a few minutes more, watching the animal eat, then fall asleep, before he left the room and wandered yet again through the dark corridors. Why did the torches keep going out? It was really getting on his nerves… A deep weariness had taken over his body and mind, tightening like a vice around his head. He was cold, in spite of the crimson coat, and he realized with exasperation that he was stinking of rhino.

Among the permanent grounds for annoyance, when living aboard a war ship, Zuko had put the hygiene almost at the top of the list: it was execrable in this little metal tin where fresh water must be saved at all costs. He suddenly remembered that he didn't need to save anything, any longer. He liked the idea.

What's more, in the state of exhaustion and strain he was in, it probably was the best way of staying operational.

There were two washrooms in the whole ship, empty and badly-lit, with a close-meshed grating by way of a floor so the dirty water would fall in the ocean. As members of the royal family, the room that was in the best condition had been reserved for Iroh and his nephew, filled with barrels of rainwater in order to prevent them from tedious trips. It was a poor privilege, though: this place too was gloomy, with traces of rust even beginning to blossom in the dankest corners.

Despite everything Zuko took a sour pleasure in filling a basin to the brim, carelessly, not having to worry about the damn liquid's waste. He had to bite back a groan as he plunged his arms into the icy water; yet again he had to summon the fire in his chest, strive to take deep breaths in spite of the inhuman cold sucking up the air from his lungs, until heavy curls of smoke rose towards the ceiling. With a fierce joy he turned the basin upside-down above his head and let the torrent of boiling hot water collapse on his shaved head and naked shoulders, the intensity of the contrast almost knocking him senseless.

He had to repeat the process a dozen times for the heat to finally penetrate through his skin. His whole body was steaming; a thick cloud had engulfed the room. The few torches had been quickly smothered by humidity: the darkness was complete, moist, undulating.

It reminded the young prince of the other torches, back in the corridors: they went out just as inexorably fast, no matter how hard he tried to rekindle them, and even though the air around them was perfectly dry.

As if some shadow lurking in his footsteps was applying to blow out all light behind him…

Had three days of this insane situation driven him paranoid? Zuko was tense in spite of the hot vapours; he couldn't quite suppress the feeling of being spied on through the moist screen of darkness. It didn't make any sense, of course: aside from a few komodo rhinos, there was no one but him in all the damn ship. Which _was _the real problem.

Nevertheless an unpleasant sensation of vulnerability lingered. He hastened to slip back into his clothes.

He didn't really know why, before leaving the room, he took the trouble to examine the floor one last time. Perhaps he needed to concentrate on a problem that would be purely material, for once. Lighting a small flame in the crook of his palm, he saw that rust had well and truly eaten into the metal in places. Now that he was thinking about it, he had already noticed such damage in the least busy parts of the ship.

One more thing he could add to the list of reproaches he would level at his men, as soon as he had got them all out of trouble…

From the slight quickening of his heartbeat and his deeper, steadier breathing, he could feel that dawn was drawing on. It was a good time to set off. What's more he was fed up with this place, with the ghostly presence that seemed to be haunting the empty corridors, with those damn torches that kept going out for no reason. He wanted to hear the wind's murmur outside; he wanted to see once again that tiny wisp of smoke, fraying far away. Only the necessity of looking in his cabin for clothes that wouldn't smell of pachyderm was still keeping him there.

Bent over the chest, Zuko wondered briefly whether it would be appropriate to go to the village with his armour on. Messenger or not, he was still venturing into enemy territory… However his uncle retorted that the Southern Water Tribe had suffered enough from Fire Nation armies already. Their attacks had been bloody and merciless: by coming to them dressed as a soldier, all his nephew would accomplish was terrorizing them or increasing their anger. Nodding to the imaginary advice, the teenager fastened a simple leather plastron under his cloak.

His eyes had grown accustomed to obscurity: when the black horn serving as the ship's prow fell to form a ramp to the ice field, he was nearly dazzled by the dim light of dawn. All trace of wind had faded with the last stars; silence had crystallised the air. Zuko felt somewhat curious as the dense snow crunched under the sole of his boot, giving way a little as he made a step forward, then another.

The pale sun was making the icebergs and the ground sparkle like jewels. The young firebender had never seen so much snow so close. The landscape was almost beautiful, bathed in morning light, an unknown beauty that made him feel strangely exposed, awkward, not unlike those footsteps disrupting the perfect, immaculate snow.

A breath of icy wind pulled him out of his contemplative torpor and, wrapping the cloak tighter around him, he started to walk faster. The cold was hurting his teeth, chafing his lungs; he concentrated on his inner fire, the familiar forge breath making the heat circulate along his bones. His face was grim yet again. How could anyone even _consider _living in this hell? The air tasted of frost: each breath made his empty stomach lurch unpleasantly. Maybe he should have tried to eat something before setting off…

No way was he turning about, though. Zuko had just found the tiny wisp of smoke, in the horizon; he focused all his attention on this light quivering in the sky. The rest would wait.

The ground was uneven, crumbling in places and he had to endure several minutes of unsteady, downright humiliating walk before he could finally find his balance. Nevertheless there was a kind of gratifying pleasure in pacing this still land bathed in dawn light, flat and endless like an open door to infinity. The young prince was too excited to remember anything about his tiredness: it didn't take him long to reach the icebergs' belt hiding his ship from view.

It was deathly cold in the glaciers' shadow, a bluish, translucent cold. The too-pale sun was shining above the ice sculptures without dispensing any warmth. Without turning back, Zuko left his ship's leaning skeleton behind, among the ice mountains, and went on his way.

It was only two hours later that he could finally see the small fortifications of snow. The uneven walls seemed even more fragile, lost in midst of the frozen desert. One could make out the top of this weird house built with snow, an _"igloo",_ he thought its name was. The smoke was going up regularly in the colourless sky. The teenager's heart was thundering against his temples, aggravating his dizziness. His throat seemed to have tightened, yet he refused to think that he was afraid.

Could they already see him, little blood-red stain on the perfection of their snow?

His pace had slowed down a bit. He was supposed to act like a messenger: he should probably send some sort of sign to make them understand his intentions…

It took him a full minute to remember a truce sign, none having been used for nearly a hundred years. Without much conviction, yet seriously, he finally raised both arms above his head and summoned a flame in his cupped hands. He let it shine in the morning light before lowering his ablaze palms towards the village, as if in offering. When the fire went out between his fingers, he stood still, watching indecisively out for the small walls of snow.

The sign must have been a bit _unclear_, for as he was about to set out again, a peasant armed with a spear appeared from behind the walls, screaming and rushing towards him. Puzzled, Zuko watched him come closer, the sparkle of snow making his eyes narrow.

He definitely didn't look anything like a mythological monster. Judging by his voice and figure, he even seemed quite young. Not a very good warrior, at that: he was maybe thirty meters away from the firebender, and yet he kept running straight towards him, as if seriously hoping to hit him with this stick that served him as a weapon. As the distance separating them grew shorter, the prince could make out the pieces of his light, bluish armour, and take in the most vulnerable parts.

His skin was dark, as he had been told, brown like damp earth. That was strange: he had imagined those people completely black, an inhuman colour that would make them invisible at night. At a distance, he almost looked like a native of his own country who would have spent a bit too much time in the sun…

He was coming at last. Applying himself as if for an exercise, Zuko swivelled round in one fluid gesture, snatched the rudimentary weapon and let the other fall flat on the snow. The spear was light in his hand, almost like a toy. He didn't know what to do with it, and had to refrain from just snapping it in two. He ended up putting the thing under the peasant's throat, freezing him to the spot as he was about to brandish some strange curved weapon.

They stayed still a few moments, one standing, the other half slumped in the snow, staring at each other with a morbid fascination.

His opponent was about his age. He was breathing laboriously after his fall, yet his eyes were fixed on the huge scar, the young prince's disfigured face, with a mixture of disgust and defiance. His eyes were well and truly the colour of ice, contrasting sharply with the black pupil. However the pale pigment didn't really make him seem blind, as Zuko had thought it would.

At least it proved that the damn nightmare really had been absurd…

Shaking his head, he tried to focus on the present situation. It wasn't going well at all. He wasn't supposed to find himself in such a situation, threatening the first peasant that came along with some primitive weapon.

If he started playing assailant, he would never see the end of it.

"I'm not here to fight", he said.

He winced at how weary his voice sounded, almost hollow against the pole's ice-cold wind.

"Lower your weapon, peasant", he went on in a firmer tone.

Then he took a step backwards, lowering the spear to give an example. The other one stood up slowly, one hand still grasping the metal object on his back, his weird pale eyes wide with consternation. Standing up, the two teenagers were about the same height. The light armour his opponent had put on made his shoulders look broader, while Zuko seemed almost frail in his crimson cloak.

The peasant stopped glaring at him only to glance quickly in the horizon, where the young prince had come from, as if he expected a whole army dressed in blood-red armours to materialize in the fog.

"What the hell do you take me for?" He suddenly exploded. "After all the times you Fire Nation jerks came to destroy the village, what am I supposed to _think_? That you travelled all the way here just to say hi?"

Heated by his own words, he had taken out his weapon and was watching the prince intently. Zuko's headache only managed to aggravate him a bit more:

"If I had really wanted to destroy this heap of snow you call a village, you _idiot_, I would have come with an armour and soldiers. Maybe you would like me to go back and get them?"

He was about to go on with his invectives and add that you really must have nothing to do with your time to consider sailing all the way to this hellish land just to finish the demolition of some wretched Agni-forsaken hole lost among the icebergs. Yet he remembered his role in time and tried to carry on more calmly:

"I was sent as messenger. Take me to the…chief of this place; or anyone with a bit of authority, it doesn't matter. No harm will be done to your tribe."

There was another long, uncomfortable pause as his opponent thought it over, still eyeing him distrustfully. Zuko had to hold back an aggravated groan. His plan had seemed a lot simpler when he had made it up the previous night, among the oppressive solitude of his ship… However the peasant's eyes had come to rest on the small snow fortifications, the only thing protecting the camp from the outside world. With a sigh, he finally lowered his weapon.

"Follow me", he grumbled. "But I'm warning you: I'm responsible for this village, so you really had better keep your word. No magic fire, or any of your other tricks; I've got my eye on you. And give me my spear back!"

The young prince would have been tempted to retort something: what kind of irretrievable illiterate called firebending "magic fire"? But the exhaustion kept weighing down his body and mind. Horrible weariness. He was tired of standing in midst of this ice desert, exposed to the wind piercing his bones. So he threw the stick to its owner without a word and nodded to all of his conditions.

When Zuko started walking again, the Water Tribe teenager was close behind, hands clasped around his spear; but at least he didn't seem about to throw his weird weapons in his face anymore. His features were hardened by distrustfulness, as well as some kind of offended expression that might have something to do with his pathetic battle. Or maybe the situation had just become too complicated for his peasant's brain: the young prince was enough keyed up as it was and didn't want to tire himself thinking about it. It was the other who broke the silence, speaking between gritted teeth:

"Still, for a messenger, it wouldn't have hurt to make your intentions a bit _clearer…"_

"I have made myself perfectly clear. It's not my fault you can't understand a truce sign, peasant."

"Well, it's not _my _fault those past hundred years you Fire Nation guys rather burn everything you cross than send truce signs, Scarface!"

Yet again, only sheer exhaustion prevented him from challenging the idiot to a duel. He clenched his fists hard enough to unsolder his phalanx; steam was beginning to come out of his nostrils, until he remembered that he had promised not to use his "magic fire". Resigned, he carried on walking towards the opening in the snow walls, focusing with all his might on his uncle's imaginary placating words, looking straight forward in case the damn peasant would have the nerve to snigger about his childish victory.

The uneven walls didn't look much like anything up close. Zuko was surprised to see that they protected efficiently the inhabitants from the polar wind, so much so that when he entered the village, the temperature was almost bearable. There were just a few tents around the igloo, but it was still hard to believe that this handful of women and children, massed before the two teenagers and staring at the firebender with a frightened consternation, could really constitute the whole Southern Water Tribe.

The young man had stopped in the ring of stares, about forty pale eyes fixing the hideous scar that had eaten away his face. He felt very exposed in his scarlet coat, and wasn't used to seem so tall among a group. Huge and cruel like icebergs? Yet again Zuko cursed the absurdity of his nightmare: the peasant who had attacked him seemed to be the only male here. It was almost distraughtly that the banished prince looked at those young children, those old women, having been for several weeks around no one but the sailors and soldiers of his ship.

It was all so strange that, for a second, he forgot why he had come here in the first place: mothers were clasping their toddlers against their legs as if they could catch fire at any moment; he didn't know why this seemed to harden the knot of his entrails. His head felt heavy, burning hot against the icy air. He was out of place here, the only inhabited place in all this snow-buried land…

He suddenly realized that his head was beginning to tilt over his left shoulder in a vain, instinctive attempt at hiding his burned skin from their look. But he had overcome this ludicrous habit two years ago already. He spitefully lifted up his head and took a step forward, his eyes sweeping the group of strangers, as though trying to glare at all of them with the same intensity they were inflicting him.

"Who is responsible for this village?"

He would have liked his voice to resound more strongly around him, to not give away so much his tiredness and nervous strain. But maybe he was the only one hearing the shivers reverberating to his very bones…

"The guy says he's some messenger from the Fire Nation", the teenager behind him added with caution. "I had him promise no one would attack us before I let him in."

He hadn't quite finished his sentence when an old woman stepped out of the crowd and forward. Like the others, her small figure was engulfed in a thick blue coat edged with furs. The wrinkles chapping her face underlined the uncompromising expression in her pale eyes. She ignored the girl beside her, about the prince's age, who was trying to hold her back.

Curiously _her _eyes, widened by fear, weren't the colour of ice: it was a darker blue, deeper, that reminded him of his homeland's ocean in summers' nights. He couldn't make out the expression in them.

"It is uncommon", the elder said calmly, "for the Fire Nation to dispatch messengers to our lands. Who sent you?"

For a moment the unexpected question caught him off guard, and he said nothing. In the still, ice-cold air, it was as if his head was caught in a vice: it hurt to think… And was it even normal for a messenger to be spoken to so bluntly?

He didn't know anymore.

"He's…I'm under General Iroh's command", he improvised with difficulty, inspired by the soothing voice, at the back of his mind, exhorting him to kindness and composure. "We're investigating on the disappearance of an ally crew, not far from here. Until now it has remained…inexplicable. That's why we need all the information you have concerning this event."

He wasn't sure he had been very convincing: in spite of her small body wrapped up in furs, the old woman managed to look down on him with a critical eye. The hideous scar didn't seem to impress her in the slightest as she examined his face and seemed to work out his every expression. Gradually the teenager was taking notice of the deep, dark ring under his unburned eye, of the black bruise still visible on his shaved head, of the piercing one that a control board had imprinted on his side during the mooring…

But she couldn't see _this _wound through his clothes, could she?

Suddenly nervous, the young man gave up on his tries to act as a messenger with some plausibility and, reprimanding himself mentally for getting into such a state because of some plain wrinkled peasant, he hurried through whatever he still had to say:

"We moored our ship about two miles away from here, eastwards. As long as nobody comes near it, and as long as you give us the information we seek, no soldier will set foot on your land. You won't have anything to fear from our being here…"

During all his short speech, he had fought against the stupid impulse to look somewhere else: the tips of his boots, the clouds, the little heap of snow on his right, anything but the piercing eyes of the old woman. The villagers surrounding them were listening silently to the dialog. Mothers were still protecting their children with their arms; it was getting on Zuko's nerves. Hadn't he just promised he wouldn't hurt anyone? Behind him the peasant had yet to lower his spear, and was grimly eyeing the distance separating the firebender from the old woman. Dozens of ice-coloured stares weighing on his spine…

He couldn't see the girl anymore.

"Your proposition sounds reasonable, the elder said at last, her expression unreadable. Very well, we accept the truce. Of course, due to the current war against the Fire Nation, we won't deliver any piece of information that could compromise us or our allies."

The young firebender nodded, relieved that they were getting somewhere. The old peasant, however, was examining his face silently and with even more intensity than before. Zuko suddenly wondered whether it had been suspicious of him to agree so quickly to her conditions, since he was supposed to have such a crushing superiority over them all. He was feeling unpleasantly transparent, not unlike those times when he had tried to hide something from his uncle. Could all old people really see into his head?

"There can be many causes to such disappearances", she went on unperturbed. "Our history is filled with mysteries similar to this one. Not to mention our legends… Anyway, we will be more at ease to talk inside: it is no use standing there waiting to catch our death."

So saying, she made a solemn gesture towards the igloo in the centre of the village, like a noble hostess. The ring of villagers immediately parted to let them through. With one look she stopped the peasant who had made a step forward, gripping his spear, and who seemed about to intervene.

"You have done well for the village, Sokka. Now lower your weapon: I won't tolerate any aggressive behaviour towards a messenger. You should tell the children they mustn't venture to the east, on no account."

While talking, she had turned her head towards the girl, the one whose eyes weren't the colour of ice, so that her last sentence seemed to be addressed to her. The young peasant, a resolute expression written on her face as if she had been given some secret mission, nodded vigorously and ran inside a tent.

Zuko, however, had no strength left to be surprised by any of this.

He had to walk almost doubled up in order to walk through a small snow passageway and enter the igloo. It was larger inside; the floor was covered with furs, giving a faint animal scent to the room, pleasantly _alive _after the taste of frost that the wind carried, making his stomach lurch. What's more, it was warm.

Zuko looked around him with confusion: was it really possible that the walls keeping this warmth were made of snow? It seemed so surreal…

With an authority that sounded natural to her, the old peasant told him to take off his boots as well as any weapon or piece of armour he might have on him. "We're here to parley, not to fight a duel." Zuko would have hesitated: wasn't it risky to be left so vulnerable in the middle of an enemy village? Yet the voice of his uncle reminded him that since this handful of refugees included only one fighter, they would never take the risk of harming the messenger of a powerful nation. Finally he took off his boots, with some relief after two hours of uneasy walk in the snow, as well as the leather plastron against his chest.

Then he noticed the hearth in the middle of the room, throwing orange reflections onto the rounded walls, hypnotizing him. He immediately put the cloak back over his shoulders and came to kneel as close to the flames as he could. The fire gave off a bittersweet scent, probably coming from the containers hanging above the flames. Curls of smoke and steam were rising without a sound to the opening in the centre of the ceiling: the slight quivering in the sky he had seen abroad his ship… From time to time a spark would jump in the hearth with a snap, adding to the perpetual humming that filled the room, like the breath of a sleeping animal.

It was strange and wonderful, the warmth of his element falling on his frost-bitten, fever-burned face. There was something almost magical in finding fire in this igloo, among the Southern Water Tribe, in this hostile country made of ice. The flames were crackling benevolently, strong, not mysteriously going out like the torches of his ship.

For the first time in four days, a deep sense of relief fell on the young prince's shoulders.

"It has been a long time since we last received a messenger or any visit from the outside world", the old woman said as she filled two cups with a fuming liquid, perhaps some kind of tea, from one of the containers. "I'm afraid we're now too poor to honour your presence as well as we should."

"Getting the information I seek is the only thing that matters", objected the teenager, shaking his head, in a tone he hoped to be firm.

The peasant had put a burning cup in his hands: the porcelain was delicate, and would have been splendid if years hadn't tarnished and chipped it. But it was warm between his fingers reddened by the polar wind. The elder's gestures were slow and measured, a soothing attitude that reminded him of his uncle. He could almost hear the old man's jovial reprimand: _"Now, Prince Zuko, where are your manners?"_ so he raised the gift to his forehead and bowed slightly.

The drink was disgusting, catching in his throat with a taste of seaweeds and salt. He forced himself to swallow half of it, letting the burning liquid revive his body while he tried to suppress a grimace. His hostess hadn't stopped looking at him, yet her piercing eyes didn't seem all that menacing in the warm room…

"Take your time drinking", she said simply. "You must be tired."

The young prince failed to take offense at the peasant's speaking to him as if to a kid.

"It has been a long journey to this place…" He heard himself pronounce in a soft, weary voice he hardly recognized.

He intertwined his fingers around the porcelain, enjoying its warmth without yet daring to finish the awful liquid. In the pleasant fog relaxing his body and mind, he felt paradoxically more lucid, capable of breaking the silent horror of the disappearances, convinced that he was going to find, at last, some explanation that would lead him to his men.

He told her everything he knew about his own situation, almost with detachment: the ship had been westwards from the village when in one night the whole crew had vanished (if his hostess had a map to give him, he could show her the disappearance's exact location). The ship itself had been left intact, with no trace of degradation that could indicate a fight and provide a clue for their investigation. It had been verified that no other ship was to be found in the area during the events. For the time being, nobody knew what had become of all those men…

He realized how eerie his own story sounded; yet fear couldn't reach him. The fire was still dancing in front of him, calm and protective. All the anxiety that had seemed about to crush him in the dark, empty corridors was very distant now, like the imprecise fragments of a nightmare. Before the disgusting liquid (that, for lack of a better term, he had decided to call tea) could cool down, he emptied the cup in one gulp.

The elder was still examining him, yet Zuko couldn't worry any longer about his looking more like an exhausted refugee than a messenger. He listened as she talked for a little while: her knowledge was limited; only a trained Southern sailor could know what really concealed this ocean. Of course, they still had a few maps indicating the currents: many disappearances of ships had been caused by particularly treacherous rapids. A fair amount of their legends had also been transferred in writing: one of them might bring up similar disappearances; if he would wait here for the doyen to go and get those documents… The firbender nodded: "Any lead will do."

The old woman stood up and went to the snow passageway. Once there, she seemed to hesitate before speaking again:

"Those maps and legends are almost the only inheritance we have left from our former tribe, a hundred years ago. Has General Iroh anything to offer us in return?"

Hearing this stranger pronounce his uncle's name brought him a strange, but great relief. As if Iroh's existence being acknowledged by an outsider could increase his chances of still being alive, somewhere…

"We have money and supplies. As well as a few valuables."

"The supplies will serve us more here", she answered with half a smile.

Then the elder bowed without too much deference and left.

The young prince was now alone, huddled up close to the hearth, holding his heavy coat tight around his shoulders as he gazed at the flames. His toes, still a bit numb, were moving among the furs. He put the cup before him and allowed himself to be lulled by the humming of his homeland's element and by the warm darkness of the room. It was curious to think that a complete stranger was currently looking for the information the life of his uncle might depend on.

Curious to feel safer between these round walls made of snow, inside this small camp where only a handful of strangers separated him from a never-ending ice-desert, than he had been in his own ship…

The warm fog was getting thicker in his head, relaxing his muscles. The hearth was now only appearing to him as an orange, benevolent vapour, diagonally crossing his field of vision. The animal scent was a little stronger; he could feel the warmth of fur against his cheek, another bastion against the ice-cold atmosphere of the pole. His legs were still tucked up since he had slipped from his kneeling position. Half-conscious, he arranged the cloak so that crimson velvet would cover him up to his chin.

_It would really be stupid to fall asleep in such a place, _he had the time to tell himself, eyes already shut.

And like a dead leaf the thought drifted and was lost in the dark.


	5. And may madness finish you off 3

_To Honour the moment_

Hey there! No, I'm not dead. Just...really, really slow, and not fluent at English. I don't always take my dictionnary with me when I go on holiday... Anyway, thanks to all of you who have the patience to keep reading my fanfic despite my laziness. And special thanks to Avocadolove: if it wasn't for her, my story would be filled with words that almost don't exist like "automat" or "spindrift"! Someday I will make a list of those words.

At last, here is the last part of my second chapter. I think it should explain its title "And may madness finish you off"...

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Chapter 2 : And may madness finish you off (Part 3/3)

He emerged from sleep as if from warm water, roused by the distant light of dawn heating the blood in his veins. At first he didn't move from his huddled up position by the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the furs under him, as well as the appearance of the sun. The heart of his bending could rise even in this hostile land.

…The light of _dawn?_

He couldn't have slept in their village for twenty-four hours!

Throwing away the cloak that had served him as a blanket, Zuko straightened up and hastily scanned the room. There was no one in. His boots and plastron hadn't been moved from near the entrance; several scrolls, as well as a few books, had been left next to them. He could make out the sounds of a discussion outside.

The villagers were still here.

Calmer now, the young prince sat up on the furs and looked at the material he had been given. His head felt light all of a sudden, now that he was rid of the exhaustion that had caught his brain in a vice. Cold wasn't eating into his inner fire any longer; his fever almost seemed about to get better. He took a deep breath. The day was breaking. He had some concrete things to guide him in his search at last. He couldn't be pessimistic.

And if he had looked more like a refugee washed up on their land than a Fire Nation messenger in those peasants' eyes, it was none of his concern. Now he could keep on fighting.

The firebender jumped on his feet and, overcome by vertigo, nearly fell back on his knees. His vision remained blurred for a few seconds, the villagers' voices only reaching him through a veil of water. The surprised exclamations echoing outside sounded muffled, very far away. His body was so light and empty that the air seemed to go through it like a ghost. His stomach felt like a gulf.

He was going to go back to his ship with the documents. He had to eat something… It would finish regenerating his strength: he didn't feel weak anyway. Almost exhilarated, as giddy as he was. He would start his search today: his uncle and men were alive, they had to be. And he was _going_ to find them. He had his inner fire with him, the forge breath in his lungs akin to the burning star rising outside. This land wouldn't get the better of him, it never would.

He would go back to his ship, take the time to eat something, prepare his expedition, do something about this raging feeling of emptiness, _Agni, I'm __**so **__hungry…_

His vertigo was gradually dying down; the voices were becoming clearer through the snow passageway. Some of them sounded familiar, though they were talking too fast for his clouded and starved mind to understand. It was loud; there even seemed to be a hint of panic in a young, feminine voice he hadn't heard before. A quarrel?

Shaking his head, Zuko made for the books next to his things, and tried to decipher the title on a first volume, half erased by years. He heard the villagers better from where he was; their argument was putting him off from the writing…

"Yeah, it was eastwards, but…"

"What the hell were you doing there, anyway? Do you really want to bring a whole army on us? It's right where that guy's ship is moored!"

His ship?

"But it couldn't be the one! That thing is a wreck; it must have rotted for decades before ending up in such a state!"

His blood froze. His hands stopped rummaging among the scrolls and shook violently. The little high-pitched sentence was spinning around his mind, making him dizzy. A sudden nausea made his stomach churn.

"We didn't get too close," the high-pitched voice went on, "It was covered in rust: some of it even fell in the snow, it was pretty scary. It must really have been a while since anyone has been in there…"

It was more than he could stand. Forgetting what he was doing, now only aware of his own fever and of this intense, nauseating feeling, he rushed outside.

The light of dawn reverberated by the snow walls nearly knocked him out. Fire was spurting out from between his teeth; his whole body was burning. He couldn't feel the wind, blowing ice-cold through his clothes now that he didn't have his velvet cloak to protect him. Nor did he notice the slowly melting snow under the sole of his bare feet.

The voices had fallen silent. Before him stood the old woman, the peasant, and the girl whose eyes weren't the colour of ice. There was also a bald child dressed in orange, the one who had been talking before, as well as a great white beast: a broad arrow had been drawn on both their foreheads, and _that _should have meant something, something essential, but the young prince wasn't able to think any longer.

Nothing made sense to him. He didn't want to have heard anything; he didn't want anything to be true, ever, so reality would cease exceeding in horror his most absurd nightmares.

"The ship in the east…" He heard himself pronounce in a hoarse voice. "Behind the iceberg's belt?"

All eyes were on him, yet he could only see them through a fog: perhaps it was his vertigo, or the steam coming off his whole body with a low hiss already formed a screen thick enough to part him from the outside world. The bald kid was watching him with an expression that looked like fear, which wasn't logical, for he made a concerned step towards him as he answered:

"Er…There was an iceberg's belt, yes. But you know, the ship is all rusted, so it can't be yours. Hey, aren't you cold without your shoes?"

"It can't be…"

His voice had reduced to a breath. He made a staggering step backwards, as if trying to escape this person and their absurd claims. He felt sick. He couldn't take it any longer. He didn't want to hear anything more; he didn't want this guy to come near him, so with all of his strength he started to scream, as if it could make him disappear:

"You're lying! YOU'RE LYING! _YOU'RE LYING!"_

His shouts were chafing his throat, he was so thirsty. He couldn't see a thing among the blinding snow, he felt barely conscious in the steam engulfing his body and mind. From the corner of his vision he made out other villagers coming out of their tents, alerted by the sound; he was suffocating among them, he wanted to go back to his ship. He wanted things to be normal again.

He thought he heard far, very far away exclamations as he started to run towards the opening in the walls, pushing away the peasant who was trying to stop him and letting him collapse in the snow. He didn't know whether he was still screaming himself. His whole body was ablaze and, never noticing the wet cold digging into his bare feet, he rushed outside, the miles of icy wind worsening his fever.

He would never know how long he ran that day, always straight forward, stumbling over the snow that the sole of his feet melted with every step. Deaf and blind. He could only feel the pain crushing his head, poisoning his guts; all he could think about was fleeing, anywhere, somewhere he would hear his uncle's calm voice once again, instead of those wild screams that seemed to come out of his own throat.

When he stopped in the shadows of the icebergs' belt, his breathing had become so laborious it came out as a wheeze. A hoarse, cavernous coughing fit almost made him fall to the ground, yet he made himself straighten up, struggling against the feverish fog that clouded his sight. His ship's silhouette gradually appeared before him, sloping in the snow.

The superstructure had started to collapse; the black horn lied rotten on the ground. The snow itself was sprinkled with black marks like trails of dust…

He couldn't hear anything above his heartbeats, wild and painful in his chest. He could only make out the wreck through the hot steam coming out of his body, sickly contrasting with the frost-filled wind piercing his bones.

Unable to remain in the glaciers' haughty shadow any longer, he set off again, numbly, not even feeling the rays of morning light against his face, now bathed in sweat.

He slowly made his way among the patches of rust fallen in the snow, stopping only once he was in front of his ship: her side was brownish, gritty, covered with serrated bumps. As if in a trance, Zuko held out a reddened hand to brush the metal: a dark lace scratched his fingers, and a thin dust fell off the ship without a sound, black against the snow's immaculate white.

"It can't be…it can't be…"

He barely had any voice now. Snow was burning his bare feet, while the steam felt ice-cold against his glistening skin. It seemed as if his head was caught in a vice, the pressure crushing him, he couldn't think, and stupidly he came to wonder how long, _Agni_, how long he truly had slept in their village.

The dust trickle hadn't ceased oozing out from the side of the ship. In sudden rage Zuko struck the hull with all his feverish strength. His fist circled with flames pierced the metal partition and embedded itself to the shoulder. Rust scratched his arm and phalanx; the screeching was unbearable, like nightmarish roars of laughter.

Thrashing around like an animal, the young prince managed to tear himself off the ship's jaws and collapsed in the snow, shaking all over. He felt he was being watched through the serrated hole he had just opened to the darkness, a thousand tiny, mocking eyes. Rust had got trapped in his sleeve. It was everywhere around him, scattered on the ground…

_His ship was falling to dust…disappearing…and the crew…_

He couldn't look away from those dust trickles, oozing out from the metal corpse in an eerie silence.

_Had there also been dust in the cabins when his uncle and men had disappeared during his sleep, once again during his sleep?_

_Could it mean that…_

He couldn't understand his own thoughts any more. He couldn't make out anything through the steam. He was ablaze, he couldn't hear his own screams. He was vaguely becoming aware of a human presence next to him, two figures discussing with concerned voices, yet he couldn't have said for how long they had been here.

Four small hands seized him, as if to drag him somewhere. He tried to struggle against them, but his burning limbs didn't obey him. He felt he was hauled up with difficulty on a warm, living fur, and then his perceptions seemed to fragment: he was ascending; the girl's hand was cool against his forehead bathed in sweat; he was hearing her voice without understanding a word. Other hands were grabbing him, he wanted to escape them: they made him drink something, but he couldn't tell whether the liquid was hot or ice-cold as it went down his throat.

He sensed they wanted to make him sleep: the sole thought put him in an uncontrollable panic. He painfully parted his eyelids, never making out a thing through the whitish fog that engulfed his field of vision, but he had to get away, say something, it would happen again if he fell asleep once more, he must get away… His shoulders were shaking in spasms, irregularly, like tearless sobs.

"It happens while I'm asleep…" He was struggling weakly, striving in vain to keep his eyes open. "All of them, my uncle, the crew, all of them dead, they fell to dust, just like the ship, I will wake up in the snow, I must not sleep anymore…"


	6. In the jaws of frost

_To Honour the moment_

Hi! As usual, sorry for the wait. I also wanted to thank you for all the nice reviews I got for the last chapter. I'm really touched! :-) I wish I could write faster so I could feel better connected to you all. Until I manage to do that...have a good reading!

Special thanks to Avocadolove for her beta-reading and encouragements!

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Chapter 3: In the jaws of frost

Kanna knelt down in front of the fire. Her stiff joints, which seemed to become less reliable with every passing year, made the gesture very slow. It didn't matter much, though: she had had plenty of time to use them. The tea gave off a bitter scent in the room as she filled a cup yet again, a gesture she had been repeating with imperturbable calmness for hours. Her dark hands, furrowed with wrinkles, hardly felt the porcelain's warmth, just like they barely suffered from her homeland's biting cold.

It wasn't as if winter could try and damage her hardened skin here, anyway: a pelt had been pulled over the igloo's entrance, and the fire had been built as high as possible, bright shadows spreading over the snow walls. The flames filled the room with a great crackling and greater warmth, almost suffocating, carrying a strong scent of tea and furs.

For a brief moment the old woman was overcome by the penetrating smell, as if just noticing it. Too familiar. Her gestures slowed down, she seemed immobile.

It smelt like illness. Like loved ones struck down by fever, their pain broken with fits of delirium, their wounds throbbing under the bandages… It smelt like memory, like waiting. The gnawing fear that eyes, screwed up by nightmares, might never open, that the shaking body might become still, might lose all the warmth its dead heart should circulate through the arteries.

It smelt like sweat, like struggling. Sometimes Kanna thought this heavy scent also was the smell of agony, of the long lonely nights of mourning. Of silence…

A muffled moan roused her from her torpor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a heap of blankets move in weak, sporadic shudders. A slight wisp of steam was rising from the furs, mingling with the fire's smoke.

"There, there, it's alright," she instinctively said. "I'm right here, don't be afraid. Try to sleep…"

She spoke almost as slowly as she moved, in a quiet, soothing voice. She had been talking a lot those past hours, always in that same gentle tone. Another thing she had been doing a lot in her life: talking without pause, without really having anything to say, as long as she could. In the distant hope that the sick person might hear her from the depths of his delirium, and let her voice guide him back to reality. It was but another way to wait. To hush the unsaid question that haunted her every word:

Was he, was she going to die, this brother, sister or niece, this child? Was she going to lose him or her forever as well?

So many others were taken away by the war. By the firebenders who had started it… The old woman from the Southern Water Tribe was patiently standing up on her spindly legs, the cup steaming in her hands. A bitter half-smile was playing at the corner of her lips.

How ironic destiny was… But she had long since given up on cursing fate. All she could do was worry about what was before her eyes, here and now.

Thus she had never much dwelt on the strangeness of the situation. She kept on talking without listening to her own words and went to sit next to the silhouette struggling among the furs. She set the cup of tea to the side, waiting for him to calm down. Like she had done about a dozen times the past two days. And more than a thousand times her whole life long…

His moans were mingled with the sound of a hoarse, laborious breathing, like he was choking back tears. The boy kept tossing restlessly, tormented by nightmares: he would have been in every aspect the same as all the previous sick children if the hand convulsively clutching the furs hadn't been white as snow.

Leaning above the blankets, Kanna could make out his face drenched in sweat, as white as his hand. Though his fever was probably to blame, the boy looked even paler than the other warriors of his kind.

But on second thought, she couldn't remember having ever seen a firebender that clearly. What with the armour…

The boy was lying with his head sideways, so she could only see the unburned part of his face. His eyes were tightly shut; his chapped lips were moving awkwardly without forming a word. Gently, the old woman put a tan hand on his forehead, avoiding the bandage where he had somehow managed to get that giant bruise. She kept repeating reassuring words like a lullaby as she caressed his head glistening with sweat.

After all, despite this too-white skin, and even in spite of the slight wisp of steam that came regularly out of his nostrils, the boy was a lot like them. A very young boy.

_Alm__ost too young to be found so far away from home, all alone_… Kanna knitted her brows, even though her voice didn't get any less calm or her caress any less soothing on the young foreigner's face: when she had seen him for the first time, this awkward and tired warrior, she had thought he couldn't be older than twenty.

And when she had found him curled up near the fire barely one hour later, wrapped in his winter cloak with his face finally relaxed, so fast asleep he hadn't even stirred as she entered the igloo, she had seen he wasn't yet seventeen.

His skin was almost as hot as the cup by her side. If she kept her hand a few inches from his cheek, she could feel a very faint movement along her fingers: the steam that had been steadily coming from his every pore for the past two days. He was struggling against the blankets' weight in silence. His body stiffened and shivered with each assault of fever, his nails scratching the floor. Blindly he tried to lift his face to the cool, callous hand on his forehead, as though hoping to make out its owner. His breathing was hoarse, halting, yet he kept trying to talk.

For two days the young firebender had hardly broken off his delirium. He had been brought back from the wrecked ship by Katara and the nomad Aang, one as scared as the other: the boy in their arms had been white-hot, barely visible under all the steam, barefoot. His shirt had been drenched by snow, making her wonder that there could be in the Fire Nation children more reckless than her own grandson… All the time they had spent taking off his freezing clothes, making him drink something warm lest he would die of hypothermia in a few minutes and lying him down in the igloo, he had never stopped struggling. For several hours he even had fiercely fended off sleep.

Kanna had soon had to drive Aang off the igloo: the young nomad had been listening to his protests with an anxious fascination, growing more and more disturbed. He had even asked, in a soft voice, whether in this time, after a hundred years, people could really turn to dust at random. Was it because of the war? Was the village in danger of disappearing as well? Kanna had sent Katara to reassure the child and try to make him sleep.

And thus she had found herself alone with the ill young man as he kept on talking, desperately, racked with tearless sobs.

Most of the boy's delirium was hard to decipher: his speech was confused, his voice thick with exhaustion. Sometimes his sentences were lost among a stream of disjointed words, probably induced by hallucinations or nightmares. He was afraid of falling asleep, kept talking about his ship, saying it had fallen to dust. His men were all dead, had they found ashes in their cabins? He had to know, the village too was going to disappear if he fell asleep, he would wake up in the snow, so cold, _I want to go home, father please let me come home…_

Exhaustion had gotten the better of him at last. Since the previous day he had been falling at intervals in a heavy, unpleasant sleep. Yet Kanna didn't stop encouraging him to rest: even this chasm eaten away by nightmares would eventually give him back his strength.

She carefully put her hand on the stranger's closed eyes. Her palm was cool against the feverish skin; the teenager let out a deep sigh. At last his muscles started to relax.

Those times where he would calm down were still rare and fragile: a sudden gesture was usually enough for him to panic again. That's why Kanna didn't react upon hearing someone enter the igloo behind her. She could easily recognize the different walks of the inhabitants of her village anyway, especially her own family's. She didn't have to turn her head to greet the newcomer:

"You made it quick, Sokka."

The teenager came to sit by her side without answering. In the warm room, she could almost smell the polar wind clinging to his clothes. The cold didn't seem to bother him, though. His breathing was a bit halting: he had walked a long while. His face was sullen as he watched his grandmother's hand, very dark against the stranger's white skin, with an obvious disapproval.

For the time being, Kanna chose to ignore his bad mood.

"It seems he has finally calmed down. Since you are here, I can use some help: lift him up while I make him drink, will you?"

"You want me to _touch _a Fire Nation jerk?" the young warrior choked, roused from his hostile staring. "You remember that that idiot almost made me die of hypothermia _twice _by throwing me in the snow, right?"

The old woman, however, had already picked up the cup. Unmoved by her grandson's indignation, she watched him patiently, her look as sober as it was insistent. Finally he resigned himself to lean over the ill boy.

"Don't come and complain if his jerkiness is catching and I start putting things on fire," he muttered. "Mothering the enemy. To make me do _that_, there had better be something good to eat tonight…HEY! That burns!"

Out of sheer miracle the teenager didn't let go of the foreigner to let him collapse on the furs. Muttering curses, blowing on his fingers in an attempt to cool them down, Sokka finally managed to sit him up. The ill boy's eyelids fluttered in his efforts to open his eyes; for a moment, he looked like he was going to struggle yet again. The blankets had slipped down to his waist: hot and silent, the wisps of steam coming out of his body were clearly visible.

Kanna had long since stopped paying attention to them: the phenomenon wasn't dangerous except for the firebender himself, who had to drink regularly lest he would dehydrate in a few hours. His grandson, however, was staring at the steam with open hostility.

"Not normal at _all_. Damn, that guy is steaming like a cooked fish! Are all firebenders really like this?"

There was some seriousness in the last question, and Sokka's bright eyes, looking at the old woman once again, were definitely waiting for an answer. As usual, Kanna didn't hurry up and comply. She patiently put the cup against the patient's lips, slightly tipping his head so as to encourage him to drink. The boy furrowed his brows, "…Uncle?" then accepted the tea.

"I didn't get to look after many firebenders in my life, Sokka," she said at last, in the same soothing voice she had been using to calm down the young stranger. "It is said they can change their body temperature at will. Among other things. I don't know how much of it is true. Don't move yet, I'm going to refill that cup…"

And so the young Water Tribe warrior remained still for nearly fifteen minutes, with a resignation he would later call heroic, supporting his enemy while the old woman, slowly and patiently, worked on quenching his thirst. The foreigner seemed to become gradually more lucid: his lips had ceased forming disjointed words, and he wasn't tossing any longer. He even managed to lift a pale hand to hold the cup against his lips. However his half open eyes, gold tarnished by exhaustion, still saw nothing.

"It should do for now. You can lie him down. Slower, Sokka… His fever has stabilized. He's a strong boy: barring a relapse, he should be up in a week."

"Hooray…"

Sokka had let go of the other teenager as fast as he could without actually dropping him. He then rubbed his hands on his thighs in a rather theatrical gesture, as though cleansing himself of the contact. The firebender buried his face in the furs, eyes tightly shut as he breathed out steam in a sigh of relief. Kanna and his grandson remained still for a while, kneeling side by side in front of the unconscious boy, watching him sink into a more peaceful slumber.

Sokka seemed to find the silence rather unpleasant, for he soon started to fidget, awkwardly, shooting dirty looks at the foreigner.

"His skin is so weird," he said at last. "It looks like some kind of fish-chicken meat that lost its blood. Man, do they all look like freaking _corpses _where he comes from? No wonder they only show themselves in armour: I bet they attacked the other lands because they were all laughing too hard. And did you see his eyes? They're _yellow_, like an animal's! Do they glow in the dark, too? How do they even think it's normal?"

Kanna couldn't suppress a smile: her grandson's sarcastic sentences didn't quite hide the reproach in his voice, somewhat sour, sounding suspiciously like jealousy. His reprobating glare often travelled from the stranger's pale face to the bulging muscles on his arms and shoulders.

"So, how did your expedition go?" she asked, noticing that Sokka had started examining his own dark arms, thin in comparison, with a deeper and deeper frown. "You found the ship, didn't you?"

For a second, the young warrior seemed to flinch at her words; yet he did his best to answer casually:

"Yeah… That ship in the east. It's all rusted, just like Katara and Aang said. It's a bit strange that it hasn't already collapsed, actually. I haven't been inside: those Fire Nation engines must be stuffed with booby traps; I don't want to test them. And it's not like there's anything to see anyway: that skeleton must have been rusting here for decades before ending up in that state. The guy can't have come abroad that thing!"

At his last sentence he whirled towards his grandmother, his look urgent, as if begging her to share his opinion. Unfortunately for him, Kanna had never been known for that kind of mercy.

"I don't recall having ever heard of a Fire Nation ship aground in this area, though," she said evenly, keeping her voice low so as not to wake up the sick boy.

"I never saw it before, either," Sokka admitted reluctantly. "But that doesn't mean anything: it's hidden by a whole belt of glaciers, so you can't really see it from afar. I don't know…maybe it was stuck in the ice all these years, and it only melted recently. There must be some logical explanation. The Fire Nation builds shitty ships alright, but even they aren't hopeless enough to make their metal rust in one night! And as for that guy…"

He hesitated. His gaze fell yet again on the silhouette curled up under the furs. The stranger's eyes were moving behind his closed lids.

"…I don't know who he is or how the hell he got here, but he's nuts. Completely off his rocker. You _saw _him run out of the village screaming, didn't you? You can't seriously believe a word of what he says!"

Yet again, the imploring look of her grandson. _Please agree with me. I don't want this conversation to go any further._

"So according to you, the boy didn't arrive from the ship, but from farther in the east?" she said.

"Something like that, I guess. From the east, or maybe the inner lands. Since he's crazy, he probably wandered a bit before coming upon the village."

"For several days, then… Long enough for him to lose all bearings and mistake that wreck for his own ship."

A thin smile played over her lips.

"And he managed to survive all this time in the dead of winter, perhaps several nights with only his cloak to protect him from the cold and no food at all? You must have noticed he hardly got any chilblain."

Sokka winced as if in pain, shrinking away from her words. Kanna watched him compassionately. She was determined to stay firm, though: the truth couldn't be simplified as easily as by keeping part of it silent. Her grandchildren were going to need to know that eventually, perhaps in the near future…

"It must be a firebender thing!" the teenager said, shaking his head. "And he must have had a few things with him to survive around here. Maybe…maybe he just hid them somewhere before coming to the village, he's crazy after all! I don't know, Gran-Gran. I have no idea how that guy got here. I don't know how he managed to stay alive. But there has to be a way to explain it. There has to…"

His voice died away. They could hear the patient's breathing yet again, a bit hoarse. The foreigner was knitting his unburned brow, his fists clenching and unclenching against the furs, shivering. The sound was halting, painful, yet he kept on breathing, stubbornly, fighting off the feverish visions that had overcome him once again. Kanna put the blanket back over his shoulders with precaution.

"If there is such an explanation, he will tell us himself, when he wakes up. Be patient."

The silence that greeted the last sentence was oddly tense. Sokka had taken out his boomerang. His hands were clutching the hilt without his taking notice. In the suffocating room, there was nothing to be heard but the stranger's obstinate breathing and the crackling of the fire, its orange light reflecting on the white forehead glistening with sweat.

Her grandson seemed to avoid looking at that face.

"When he wakes up…"

Sokka's eyes were now fixed to the floor. He gritted his teeth, as though refraining from biting his lower lip. He swallowed with some difficulty, then spoke again as violently as he could, refusing to look at her:

"Why are we helping that crazy jerk anyway? Am I the only one here who _remembers_ there's a war going on? That guy is a firebender, just like the ones who killed Mom, and…and I promised Dad I would protect the village! What if he ends up attacking someone? We can't trust him! We should…"

"Yes?" Kanna interrupted, without raising her voice. "What should we do? Drive him out of the village and let the cold rid us of him? Finish him off ourselves and throw his body into the sea?"

Head low, Sokka didn't answer. However his shoulders became rigid at the old woman's words, and he let go of his weapon like the touch had just burned him. The emotion showing through his set lips and fixed stare was almost miserable.

"I already told you, Sokka," his grandmother went on with more gentleness, "I won't tolerate any aggressive behaviour towards a messenger. It would be dishonourable, as well as a bad omen for our tribe. This boy is our guest, and as such we owe him assistance."

"But he is _not_ a messenger!" Sokka protested in despair. "I have seen that freaking heap of rust! It must have been at least fifty years since you could even _call _it a ship. No one can live aboard that thing. From what I can see of that jerk's sanity, General Iroh might as well have never existed!"

The strangled noise the foreigner made in his sleep sounded like a groan of protest. He had instinctively tucked his arms before his face, hiding the enormous scar. Kanna couldn't say whether it was a new hallucination from which he was trying to protect himself, or the unknown voices distorting ominously above his head.

Her eyes didn't leave the ill boy, yet this time Kanna took some time to think about her grandson's words. Sokka's nearly pathological pragmatism was a rare trait in the Southern Water Tribe. As for herself, she remained attached to the traditions, myths and countless tales of her people. She had some life experience on her hands. She could recognize a sign when one came to her.

For all her life the war had filled her mind with gruesome images: nightly visions or waking nightmares in which loved ones came back from a faraway land, disfigured and mad, like ragged ghosts of what they had been. She had seen them all come back in that way, her parents, Pakku, the man she had loved when she was still a girl, Kya, Hakoda, her son-in-law still roaming the seas somewhere… Even her grandchildren had joined the deadly procession a few years since.

Those nightmares were recurring and, in spite of their intensity, not uncommon: a mere remainder of her fear for the future, and of her powerlessness over it. Many other women in the village were tormented by such visions.

And perhaps her sisters had thought about them as well, when they had seen that scarlet figure for the first time, three days ago, the golden-eyed teenager that had appeared in their land of ice as if by miracle.

For it had been a foreigner that had come to them with his face destroyed. An exhausted Fire Nation child, lost like a refugee. He had come barely a few days after the Avatar, aboard an empty war ship eaten away by rust.

And he had told them: "_I am a messenger."_

During her life, Kanna had heard her share of legends, and seen for herself a good many spirits. Whatever it was that this boy was here to foretell, wicked or favourable, was probably already near the village, not yet material.

Lurking behind the ice walls, invisible, lying in wait in the very wind…

Unless it was to come from higher above, farther than the black hole out of which the blind spirits crawl. The teenager had arrived with the rising sun, after all. Then perhaps it was undulating in the air above them, in the frozen sky and the morning light, silent. For the time being.

Kanna didn't notice the small smile that stretched her dark lips, bringing some light to her wrinkled face. Her grandson did, though, having stared at her for a whole minute in wait for the least reaction to his words. He shook his head in defeat, his shoulders somewhat relaxing as he let out an overdramatic sigh.

"Great… Looks like I'll just have to stop sleeping and mount guard in front of the igloo, in case Mr. Crazy here decides to put the tents on _fire. _Do Katara and you even think about all the work it gives me before letting all the suspicious guys settle in our village?"

"We all have faith in your zeal, Sokka," Kanna said, putting a hand on her grandson's shoulder with a good humour she couldn't explain. "You can warn me if his fever worsens during the night, as well."

"There you go…"

Applying to keep his expression both offended and dignified, the teenager stood up, muttering something about making sure the annoying acrobat hadn't brought the kids on a sightseeing trip in the damn heap of rust filled with booby traps. Before he turned to leave the igloo, he threw a last disgusted look at the foreigner, sound asleep among the furs, his strange white arms tucked in front of his face, the muscles on his shoulders clearly visible in spite of the long days of fever.

Sokka tried to hide with a disdainful sniff the face he was starting to pull.

"I bet he just puffed them up anyway…"

* * *

_He had fallen asleep again._

Zuko opened his mouth and struggled to take in great gulps of air, halting like a drowning man. He couldn't remember why he mustn't sleep. The suffocating fear that gripped him by the throat whenever the thought crossed his mind was reason enough.

He was cold. He didn't know where he was. He was so thirsty. He was afraid to sleep. His hands were moving blindly, grasping the thick furs that surrounded him. Where was his uncle?

_Dead. Dead. All of them dead… _His head hurt. He didn't want to think.

The young firebender was starting to hear the crackling of a hearth, somewhere in the room, tiny golden sparks bursting every now and then before vanishing among the flames. He could feel their warmth through the blankets, pouring on his shivering body in regular waves, soothing, like a heartbeat. He wanted to get closer to the fire: why was he so cold? His hands started to grope around in the furs, searching for a support that would allow him to straighten up. A strong, animal scent filled the air, unpleasantly foreign. Where on earth was he?

At last he managed to part his eyelids; the first thing he made out was but a fog, orange and shapeless.

And then, invading his field of vision, a broad blue arrow, and two enormous grey eyes fixed on him.

"Wow! Are you awake?"

The voice was high-pitched, very loud. Zuko was beginning to make out a broad grin under the apparition's eyes. Was it surprise that quickened his heart-rate in such a way? For a second he was frozen, unable to take his eyes off the blue arrow above him, _the arrow, the arrow, like on the white bison's head, the flying bison, the airbenders… _He didn't quite understand what all this meant, yet. He started to move once more, trying to speak.

"Hey, calm down!" the high pitched voice immediately exclaimed; the blanket was crushed against his chest to keep it in place. "Don't be too loud, okay? Gran-Gran told me not to come in here, she was afraid I would wake you up; if she sees me here I'm gonna get scolded. It wasn't me who woke you up, was it? Sorry if it was me. You go back to sleep, alright?"

Either the frail arms pinning him to the floor were a lot stronger than they looked, or sickness and that abominable cold really had gotten the better of him, for he couldn't even struggle. Merely keeping his eyes open was a torture but, tense as a rope, he refused to lose sight of the strange blue arrow. Like it should reveal something to him, the most important thing, something he should have grasped from the very beginning…

Oblivious to his panic, the boy kept piling up furs across his chest, chattering merrily:

"Is your headache getting better? Gran-Gran says you have less fever. You know, I think it really was a bad idea to walk barefoot around here. You were burning up when we found you, it even scared Appa a little, and you were steaming all over! You must be quite the firebender, right? What's your name? I'm Aang. The people here are really nice, don't you think? Even though it's not anything like home… How did you get here?"

The incessant stream of questions was making his head hurt. He didn't want to think. He was afraid to think. Visions struck him at intervals, brief and vague: empty corridors, blossoming rust, tiny glowing eyes, endless extents of ice, and desperately he struggled to keep them all at bay. The growing pile of furs on his chest was starting to suffocate him. The boy seemed to take notice, for he came to a halt and resumed talking, in a quieter voice:

"They say you lost the people you were travelling with."

He didn't want to remember that. He wanted him to shut up. However all the protestation the young firebender was able to utter was a tiny hoarse sound, barely audible, humiliating. The boy came to sit by his side, clasping his knees to his chest, his too big eyes and blue arrow still turned towards him. His smile was sadder.

"I know what that's like, you know. To lose people. I don't know what happened to your friends, but…well, I have been asleep for a hundred years. In an inceberg. A hundred years, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? All the people I knew must be dead by now. So I understand what that's like."

He said some more things about how nice the people of this time were, especially Katara, that he was lucky he had gotten to know them, that maybe he and Zuko weren't in such a terrible situation, after all. His tone was soft, a bit slower. He was looking at the prince as if hoping he would smile back at him. But Zuko wasn't listening, any longer.

His breathing had become erratic. He hadn't taken his eyes off the blue arrow adorning the stranger's forehead. There were also arrows on the back of his hands. The same three words kept reverberating in his mind clouded by fever, painfully insistent: _a hundred years, a hundred years_, but could it really mean that…

Those arrows, the white bison he used as a mount, that was it, the boy was an airbender, _a hundred years…_

Impossible.

His nails were digging into the furs. He tried his hardest to make out the stranger's face through the fog that threatened to engulf his field of vision. Agni, he couldn't be about to lose consciousness yet again… Somehow, he mustered the strength to move the muscles of his face and form coherent words:

"The a…Avatar?"

The boy immediately jumped several feet in the air with a horrified yelp. Zuko felt cool draughts caressing his forehead as the stranger turned his head in all directions, wide-eyed, as though making sure nobody had overheard the barely articulate mutter of the patient.

"Spirits, don't _call _me that here!" he whispered, fidgeting. "No one must know I'm the Avatar, alright? I never really wanted to be, so I'd rather people not know about it… How did you know? You _swear_ you won't tell anyone, right?"

Zuko couldn't hear him. _The Avatar._

He couldn't even keep his eyes open, he was so cold, his throat was burning with thirst. Never had his own weakness frustrated him so much. The Avatar. He had hunted down the Avatar for three years in vain. He had been exiled all the way to this ice desert, he had lost his ship, his crew, even his uncle, he could hardly stay conscious, he was too cold in this strange, hostile land, and the Avatar, the only one whose capture could give him back his home, his family, the very sunlight, the Avatar was standing two feet away from his face.

Slowly, he managed to extricate an arm from under the pile of furs: the limb was heavy, shaking somewhat. The air of the igloo felt ice-cold against his glistening skin. Mustering all his remaining strength, he reached for his target, blind and nearly delirious, _I want to go home, I want everything to be normal again…_

However two cool, smaller hands suddenly closed on his, immobilizing him. Overcome by vertigo, the young prince barely noticed his eyes were shuddering shut; the efforts he had made so far to stay awake had exhausted him. He was unable to protest when the Avatar shook the captured limb enthusiastically, as though sealing an agreement. As darkness finally engulfed his senses, he was vaguely aware of a broad relieved grin showing countless teeth in the dark, as well as a high-pitched voice, warmly thanking him for keeping his secret.


	7. For to dust you shall return 1

_To Honour the moment_

Here I am again, trying and failing to shorten my delays! Thanks a lot to you all for encouraging me in spite of everything! I have at least some good news: I could finish another (and longer) part of this chapter during the summer, so next update will be in exactly one week. I'm so happy to be able to say that for once, you have no idea. XD

Just a warning about chapter 4: I don't want the whole fanfic to be merely about Angst, and I hope it doesn't feel that way to the reader. Still, I was completely into Lovecraft's sh ort stories when I wrote the French equivalent of this chapter. Just so you know. :-)

Thanks to Avocadolove for beta-reading!

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Chapter 4: For to dust you shall return (Part 1/3)

The snow crunched under his boots, giving an insistent rhythm to his every step. The sound seemed deafening in the silence of the South Pole, like cracks of thunder. Zuko took a fierce pleasure in every one of them as loud as possible. The sky was pale above him, white and cold like the blinding, lifeless landscape he was trying his hardest to break with the sole strength of his feet.

His neck was stiff, his head held high: his eyes never left the glacier belt which gleamed weakly less than a mile away. His back was tense, had been ever since he had gone past the village's walls. Steam had been pouring continuously out his mouth, his fists clenched for a whole hour.

He had left without ever looking back, letting the sceptical face of that so-called warrior who thought him mad disappear behind him, and doing his best to ignore the wide-open eyes of the Water Tribe girl, eyes that had looked so much colder all of a sudden _(hostile?). _Trying, mostly, to not think about the shocked, pained expression on the Avatar's childish face. No way was he feeling any guilt. He wouldn't let his anger subside.

It was all that _kid's _fault anyway. The damn fool. He shouldn't have tried and talk to him. He shouldn't ever have been the Avatar and for Agni's sake, he should _definitely _have grown up faster!

The prince's shoulders were so tense it was nearly painful. It prevented him from shaking too much, though. Sometimes it even made him feel like he didn't suffer from the cold, like he didn't have to fear the bite of winter. He didn't want to be calm.

It was that kid's fault that in a hundred years he hadn't even been able to learn two of the four elements, or an ounce of common sense. His fault that he had thought it clever to follow Zuko everywhere for a whole week (and Agni knew he wasn't in the mood for _that_, sick and alone, trapped in an enemy village whose habitants would stare at him like in all their miserable existence they had never seen a _scar_). His fault that he insisted on continuously talking to him about some Kuzon, while it should have been _obvious _that Zuko didn't want to speak to anyone. His fault that he had chosen a time when the firebender had been training, when his hands and blood had been gorged with fire, unable to stand any more of that cold, pale depression, to urge him with his high-pitched voice to _play _with him at sliding on some autochthonous creature.

His fault that the absurd invitation had been enough to shatter the silent torpor Zuko had drowned himself in ever since his waking, in a desperate attempt to escape the questions _(the terror) _threatening to crush his sanity.

His fault, thus, that the banished prince had thrown a fireball the young airbender had barely managed to dodge, and that he had roared at him for Agni knew how long, as loud as he could: he was _not _the damn kid's friend, he never would be, had he forgotten they were all at war? He had been ordered to capture the Avatar, and he _would _catch him and finally go home, he would defeat him for his land and for his father, he would have his _honour _back…

He had had the feeling that his voice was going to break on the two last words, perhaps due to the long days of silence that had parched his throat and numbed his tongue. So he had hastened on, screaming he would _also _find his crew and his uncle. He was sick of all those people taking him for a refugee and a lunatic _(why did they help him anyway?)_. He would prove them wrong. He was going to find out what had made his ship rust and his crew disappear. He was going to put an end to this absurd situation _right now! _And as the villagers came running towards them, drawn by the racket, he had turned on his heels and, furious and determined, he had headed for the glacier belt and the metal skeleton rotting inside.

Needless to say, there was no going back.

Each breath Zuko took burned his throat; he wasn't used to scream for so long. The cold was beginning to seep under his clothes, making him shiver in spite of the wisps of steam hissing against his skin, but he refused to take notice. It would be like admitting the inhabitants of the South Pole were right, that handful of peasants who had for some unknown but probably degrading reason decided to heal him, and who thought they could forbid him to walk along their frozen land as long as his convalescence would last. Zuko gritted his teeth.

He had been able to go outside the igloo for four days. Ten days had passed since he had lost consciousness in their village. Thirteen since he had woken up for the first time in an ice-cold, empty ship.

He was feeling perfectly alright, _thank you very much._

His curses kept him busy for about an hour; a too short time during which he could focus solely on an indefinite feeling of hatred. At last he could erase from his mind the sinister ship lying as if in wait among the icebergs, erase the tiny village behind him, until there was nothing in the world but the sound of his boots crushing the snow, the angry footsteps on the white landscape, and the imperceptible steam of his breath, hot and supple in the frosty sky.

Hate. Refuse. _Live._

Only once he reached the shadow of the glaciers did Zuko slow down, their bluish cold drowning his anger. For a moment he had to stop on the ice. The ground and walls all reflected the vague outlines of a small, red form, hands clutching its forearms in a vain attempt to keep itself warm. Agni knew why he always had the foolish impulse to pause in that damn corridor…

Frozen to the spot. As though the ice sculptures and their eerie shadows drew a frontier, ice-blue and threatening, an open door on a nightmare.

Beyond the glacier belt, and in a radius of several dozen yards, the snow had been swallowed by a black swarm. The ship seemed to have kept on collapsing in the space of a week. Even from a distance, the young prince could make out the rust staining its sides like a filthy fur. The black dust had merged with the snow and spread like a pest. It looked like the earth had split where his ship had been moored, and that the festering wound was widening on the ground.

A bitter wind made him shiver to the roots of his hair, briefly, before Zuko was able to break the spell paralysing his limbs. His blood started circulating again in his arteries; he shook his head to dismiss all remaining doubt and, loftily ignoring the broken figures on the ice walls, he crossed the invisible threshold and stepped into the light.

Let the villagers think what they liked: it wasn't rash impulsion only that drove him here. He was already walking among heavy lumps of iron that stained the snow. Tiny bits creaked under his boots, mocking, yet he didn't look down.

_A ship cannot rust in one day._

Soon enough he arrived to the ship's rotting side. In spit of all his will, he couldn't prevent a jagged hole from drawing his gaze, the place where his arm had sunk in the giant corpse, where he had thought he had heard that nightmarish laugh, where fever had made him delirious. He struggled to take in a deep breath.

_There is something wrong in there. I'm going to find out what._

_They will see. I'm not mad._

That last thought gave him strength. Anger, too, a slight nauseous feeling like the taste of metal, but mostly strength. Before the feeling could fade he took a step towards the opening and gripped the jagged edges to look inside. The wall creaked when he touched it; two plates of rust came off under his hands. Taken aback, he watched the rough, brownish iron crumble between his fingers.

Bits of rust kept coming off the ship's side, widening the entrance; the outlines of a crumbling corridor were gradually appearing. Raising his eyes, Zuko gazed with the same strange fascination at the imposing war ship, whipped by the polar wind. The iron didn't hold there, either: another, darker dust merged with the frost that the gusts carried.

A stream of smoke licked Zuko's lips as he breathed out, warming up the air around him.

The iron didn't hold.

Looking at the state of his ship, one would think it had been rusting among those glaciers for a good hundred years _(it __**hadn't**__, damn it!)_

So why hadn't it collapsed yet? _(because it didn't have any reason to collapse after a week!)_

What _was _that rust anyway? _(I don't know, I don't know, I don't get it…)_

One last bit of iron fell in front of him, like some eerie invitation, completing the jagged door that led him inside. It almost didn't make a sound: only one brownish scrap rolled in the dust with a low, skittering noise. Some weird impulse made the firebender withdraw his leg before it could touch the tip of his boot.

He could hardly see the corridor from the outside: nothing but a deeper shadow disappearing into the rust. The air inside was still, dusty, barely warmer than on the ice field. For a moment Zuko hesitated on the threshold, his head turning a little towards the glacier belt, far behind, that separated him from a more natural world.

Zuko froze as soon as he was conscious of his own gesture; his face set, _I said no going back! _And, as though the Water Tribe peasants had been able to see him look back, he fixed his eyes on the darkness, called a flame that rose rumbling from his hand, as if to consume the ceiling and his palm, and went in.


	8. For to dust you shall return 2

_To Honour the moment_

Thanks a lot to you all for still being here (especially terracannon876, Imperial Dragon and A Midsummer Night's Dream for reviewing)! Thanks also to Avocadolove for taking the trouble to be my beta-reader! I hope I'll be able to send the last part of this chapter soon.

(I thought you might like to know what the hell I'm doing if I still let you down for a while, so here it is: till February I'll be rehearsing almost every week-end for a jazz opera with my choir. I hope I'll be able to manage my time. Also, my character is Bresilian, and they tell me I should try to sing with an American accent lest I ha**mmer **eve**ry **sin**gle **verse in**to **the ground. Wish me good luck with that!)

Have a good reading!

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_Chapter 4: _For to dust you shall return (Part 2/3)_

The ship's floor was somewhat shifting to the right, and creaked dangerously under his weight. He had to slow down. Orange shadows distorted against the walls, outlining the trails of rust that ploughed the iron like claws. Daylight faded soon. Apart from his own glowing light and the grim creaks punctuating his walk, there was nothing around him but darkness and silence. From time to time a trickle of dust would come off the ceiling and spill in a whisper on his shoulder or shaved head.

And every time he felt the slippery caress, the young prince jumped and rekindled the fire in his palm, making sure the metal above his head wasn't going to collapse and bury him.

_You're too tense._

His heartbeat accelerated at every screech of his boots against the floor. It wasn't professional. He couldn't help feeling like he was being watched. He couldn't help hearing laughter among the creaks of rust, seeing running shadows in the darkest corners, imagining tiny mocking eyes in the reflections his flame threw on the metal walls. Always in wait. As if for all this time those creatures had been hiding in the rotting corners of his ship, waiting for him…

Monsters that could make metal rust? He had never heard of anything so stupid. Zuko forced himself to shrug.

The corridor led to a dead end. Only a ladder welded to the wall linked it to the floor above. Like the rest of the ship, it was leaning a little, yet there wasn't any rung missing. At first glance it even seemed usable.

The wall behind it, though, was gritty and brown: it didn't seem to need more than a breath to crumble completely. Zuko wasn't expecting too much when he raised his free hand to the ladder, barely brushing it at first, and then carefully closing his fingers around the nearest rung. He was abashed at the feel of it, smooth and solid. He gripped a higher rung and hauled himself up: the iron bore his weight with a barely audible grating.

The small flame in his hands was hampering him; he had to go on in the dark. The air was cold and still: the air of his ship. Like everything was normal. The ladder was holding well. He didn't get it. Hadn't he _seen_, mere seconds ago…

Curiosity got the better of him. He stopped climbing and reached for the invisible wall, a few inches away from his face. Laces of rust came off at once, grazing his skin and falling silently in the dark. Zuko hastened to bring his hand back to his chest. Senses heightened by the darkness, he thought he could hear the wall as it kept on crumbling in front of him.

The ladder was intact against him. It didn't make sense…

_Yes it does. What doesn't make sense is that the wall and all the damn ship are covered in rust in the first place!_

That last thought angered him. This was all absurd. He started climbing faster, giving up all caution towards those metal cylinders that wouldn't collapse. The floor he arrived on seemed intact, as well, spared by some miracle. The sound of his boots against the iron reverberated in the empty corridor as he walked, furious and uncomprehending, forgetting even to light his way. Suddenly the floor gave way under him, and his knee was trapped in a ragged-edged crack.

He had to stretch out his arms to not fall. His position must be ridiculous: his leg was stuck at a weird angle, it hurt a little. Shrill laughs scoffed at him before dying away, wave after wave, farther and farther below him, but perhaps was it nothing but bits of rust hitting the hull as they fell….

Zuko's breathing became erratic. Without even considering standing up, he let his hands feverishly search the floor, feeling the outlines of the crack. Serrated rust on the edges…. Beyond the crack, the iron was hard and smooth again, unscathed. Like a human skin cut open by a rotting wound. He found another crack, not too far away. Wider, it seemed, but he couldn't stretch his hands far enough to be sure. Why was he staying in the dark?

Trying to ignore the beating of his heart, he lit the small flame yet again, trembling and bright, casting its orange light on the floor.

The marks were dirty, oozing rust that spread like pus around the wound. There were several of them on the floor, some wider than others, sometimes meeting like the branches of a river. Twisting his neck, he was able to see the other ones behind him, ploughing the path he had just been walking on, filling it with traps only chance had made him avoid.

His hands were shaking. He was feeling sick all of a sudden. Yet he made himself raise his head to look at the ceiling and the walls.

They were everywhere.

The cracks ran along the walls, snaking from one to another, massing in one corrosive flow. They probably spread as far as the corridor went: new marks appeared whenever the fire would rise in his palm, as far as the eye could see. Worse, there seemed to be some sort of _will _in those long, tortuous wounds. A goal.

As though they formed a trail, the stampede of rat-worms with festering legs and incisors, crawling parasites that had taken over his ship and eaten it all the way to the foundations….

Zuko didn't even know whether he was still breathing. He felt something had stuck in his throat. Disgust turned his stomach. He struggled wildly against the crack trapping his leg, not even feeling the pain of rust scratching his calves, until fire appeared around his boot and a jolt tore him at last from the jaws of iron. Gasping, eyes wide open in the half light, he crawled to the nearest wall and flinched when his back touched yet another mark.

He couldn't hear much beyond the blood pounding against his temples, yet he was convinced the laughter kept reverberating underneath, hidden somewhere in the ship's rotten depths. His leg still hurt; memento of the iron bite around his knee. The firebender clenched his fists.

"I'm not afraid of you…."

His voice was hoarse between his gritted teeth. Almost weak. It was infuriating. Zuko stood up as best as he could, bracing himself against the wall for fear that his shaking legs wouldn't bear his weight. Then, his back flattened against the iron, the fire in his hands lighting up red sparks in his eyes, he said again as loud as he could:

"I'm not afraid of you! Are you here to kill me? Come out, attack me, you cowards! How many do you need to be to stop hiding like worms? A hundred? I order you to come out!"

No one answered his cries, but once again he thought he could hear those shrill, inhuman laughs, snaking above and under him, far away and too close, right under his boots, all around, in the very walls….

_Breath__e._

He hated the dusty taste of the air, yet he made himself inhale as much of it as he could, deeply, until the voices died away. If he was hallucinating, it really, really wasthe last thing he needed.

And if he was…_not _hallucinating, trembling like a toddler wouldn't get him anywhere.

Slowly, Zuko pulled himself away from the wall, testing his balance. Shivers kept running down his bones, yet the pain in his leg had grown faint, easy to ignore. This time, he was careful to avoid the cracks ploughing the floor, finding his way by the flickering light in his palm. He couldn't prevent his gaze from lingering on the rotting trails with a morbid fascination, admiring in spite of himself the shocking contrast with the remaining iron.

There had been no such thing outside.

It was as if the things that had made those marks in their wake had all headed for the outer walls and had massed there; eaten so much into the metal that all trace of their coming had disappeared under the rot. Around him, the corridor was in a better state already: the corners weren't sagging any longer; more and more often he found the torches welded to the walls were intact. The marks were farther and farther apart.

So strange….

He suddenly stopped in front of a door. He didn't have any real reason to do so, and for a moment he just looked at it uncomprehendingly. It wasn't any different from all the others of his ship: thick and bare, intact aside from the one brown mark crossing its surface. And yet, so familiar….

Zuko unconsciously brought the flame in his hand closer to his heart. He had to stop himself drawing back.

And to say he hadn't noticed that all this time his steps, indifferent to the unrecognizable surroundings, had been leading him out of habit to his own cabin….

Was there anything to find, another disgusting mystery beyond the door? Did he even _want _to find anything? He wasn't sure…. But his doubts aggravated him, his fear downright infuriated him: before he could hesitate a second longer the firebender kicked the iron door as hard as he could.

The crash of it hitting the wall was deafening; the vibration must have been enough for the rust to come off the most damaged parts of the ship. Yet Zuko barely heard anything. His gaze had crossed the room and settled on the red tapestry decorating the opposite wall. At first all he could see was the fire emblem in its centre, proud and scornful, miraculously unstained. The symbol gave off such assurance in the dark, such power in the cursed room, that for a moment the black flame devoured his fear.

Thus, it was impossible for Zuko to feel anything but dark satisfaction when he noticed the one stain, brown and serrated, that had eaten into the corner the flag.

Like he needed any more proof that this rust couldn't be natural….

He made a few steps inside, taking vague notice of the few other marks in the darkest corners. There had been similar ones in the washing room, a week before. For how long had those things been lurking around him? He brought his fingers close to the red tapestry, but didn't dare touch it. Up this close, there wasn't any room for doubt: there really was rust on the tapestry, rotten bits of iron wedged among the threads, making them brittle and colourless. Zuko drew back his hand. His back stiff, he turned around and examined the damaged setting.

There must be six or seven of those marks on the tapestries and walls. No trail. As if that room had for some reason never been swarming with the creatures that had rushed in the corridors….

_They all headed for the outer walls. That's why the inside of the ship is still holding. They were waiting for something on the outer walls…_

Once again the rat-worms came to his mind, a swarm of naked, blind bodies crawling against his ship's sides like some disgusting pink foam bristling with teeth….

Zuko shut his eyes tightly to chase the vision away. _Stop it. _The facts were unsettling enough right now: he didn't need to make up any more reasons for losing his mind.

He was getting cold, a vicious, silent cold that for the moment only ate into the tips of his fingers and toes: he had to rekindle the flame in his hand. The teenager searched the room; unconsciously looking for a distraction, something that could keep his mind busy, keep himself grounded. His eyes were caught by the glint of his fire on twin blades crossed against the wall. So his dao swords hadn't been eaten away by rust, either. Had been spared by those strange animals that seemed to destroy everything they touched…. He closed his hands on the hilts and took the weapons off the wall.

Were they really animals? No. They must be spirits of some kind. Zuko narrowed his eyes. How stupid of him, he should have spent more time studying those scrolls in the village. Perhaps there was a legend about it somewhere.

Why did those things attack his ship anyway? And what had they done with his crew, his uncle….

At once Zuko made himself stop thinking. He didn't want to make suppositions. His knuckles had turned white; tiny flames ran along the fireproof hilts. He glared at the shining tip of his swords, then at the edge, carefully sharpened after he had trained with them for the last time. Spared by the rust.

He wondered whether seeing those blades would convince the peasants of the South Pole that he had been telling the truth: that his ship really had arrived a week ago. That he had never been mad. That it well and truly was something supernatural that had thrown him into this nightmare.

…What if he could gather _more _proof, more intact belongings, until no one could doubt his word any longer?

Zuko immediately crouched in front of the nearest chest to search inside. Never wondering why he was so anxious that a handful of peasants would believe him.

The slightest sound reverberated against the metal walls: the rustling of clothes as he pushed them in a shoulder bag, the scraping of various objects and weapons as he pushed them away, the rumbling of the flames he lighted between his fingers to better see. All that noise made him feel uncomfortably exposed in the dark.

Vulnerable.

He wouldn't do a thing to tone them down, though. He was going to work as fast as he could, without pause nor the slightest caution, in order to resist the sick impulse to freeze, tense and distraught, the absurd impulse to listen for a stampede or a shrill laughter in the depths of silence.

Thus, in all the time he spent messing up his cabin the best he could, he only stopped twice: first when his hands met a mask of ancient wood, hidden under the false bottom of the chest. For a moment he looked at the leering face, sombrely, not really surprised that the Blue Spirit had remained indifferent to the attack of rust. He then buried it to the bottom of his bag.

The second time, as the room had become nearly unrecognizable, it was to grip the hilt of a knife and feverishly tear it from its cover. He only regained his calm when he was sure the pearl blade was still intact, and the words carved along it still the same:

_Never give up without a fight._

The familiar words reminded him of his uncle. Zuko briefly clutched the hilt, then put the knife in his belt.

At last he stood up. The surrounding chaos looked like a reflection of his own panic. The thought made him grimace. He had to get out of here. If he wanted to find convincing proof that this ship had grounded recently, after all, it wasn't his cabin he needed to search: it was the warehouse rooms. The prince nearly smiled.

After all, hadn't he promised supplies in exchange for their legends and maps?

The warehouse rooms were just above the holds. Zuko tore down the stairs as fast as the ruined metal would allow him. The bag was slung across his shoulder; he clutched the hilts of his dao swords, unconsciously, releasing them only long enough to brush the pearl dagger in his belt. He was determined to not be afraid. So he avoided looking too closely at the walls streaked with rust: he had had the feeling, upon leaving his cabin, that the marks were more numerous than before. He wouldn't let such childish hallucinations perturb him.

Not yet.

He got through several crumbling doors, ignoring the muffled sniggers that seemed to follow the grating of his boots against the rust, before he attained his goal. The warehouse room seemed spared as well. Shadows of bags were piled up in the corners; in the half-light, he could make out the outlines of barrels in front of him. Zuko made a step forwards, and the shadows moved along with the small flame in his hand, threads of orange light catching the canvas…

…and for one second, in the flickering light, he saw something sinuous slip down the wall.

At first he couldn't move at all, so strong was his repulsion for the running shadow. Nearly physical. The teenager forced himself to breathe again. The dusty air chafed his throat, and the cold, shaking breath he finally let out seemed very noisy in the empty ship. He had to do the same exercise several times before he could at last brighten the flame in his hand and rid the room of its darkness.

Brownish trails sneaked all over the ceiling and down the wall.

Of course everything was still now.

Swallowing hard, Zuko stepped near the bag behind which the creature had disappeared. The rope that kept it shut was darkened and broken. Greasy dust poured out of the opening, spreading on the floor.

The dust didn't smell like anything, yet the teenager dropped his bag and jerked away, slapping his hand over his mouth to not throw up.

Nothing else seemed to have been damaged. However Zuko could only bring himself to open the bags at the farther end of the room. The food had been well-preserved in the bitter cold. He filled his bag with dried fruits and salted meat wrapped in a cloth. His face was blank, focused on his work. He was doing his best to not look up to the ceiling.

He couldn't carry too much food anyway. He would find plenty without having to come anywhere near the burst bag and its brownish dust. What's more, the meat stored there was often the oldest, almost too tough to be eaten at all, so they used it to feed the komodo rhinos. For what he had seen so far, the food the Southern Water Tribe cooked was plain disgusting, but even they wouldn't eat such a thing….

He froze.

_The rhinos!_

Zuko couldn't tell what remaining common sense kept him from dashing to the corridor, and made him finish his work. When at last he picked up his bag and ran out of the room, he didn't even see the jaws of rust that threatened to trap his ankle with his every step.

He remembered having filled the rhinos' mangers before leaving the ship. But had it been enough? They had been trapped here for ten days….

Zuko's bag was too heavy, and he was running too fast to produce strong flames. The sparks running chaotically down his arms and neck couldn't light his way more than three feet ahead, couldn't chase off the biting cold that gnawed at his back and shaved head. A thick steam came out of his mouth with his every breath.

The komodo rhinos were trained to withstand extreme situations like this one.

But still….

For the first time in thirteen days, when the firebender kicked open the door separating him from the mounts, dead silence greeted him.

The air in the room was so cold it hurt his teeth as he breathed. It carried the unpleasant smell of ice and forage. The rhinos were hunched up in their boxes, as cold and still as rocks. Or had he seen, upon entering, something stir in Orm's box? He hung on to this thought.

The mangers were empty. It wasn't such a bad sign: all that meat must have lasted several days. The furnace's heat hadn't dispersed at once, either. Maybe they were just sluggish with the cold, maybe they were sleeping….

Letting the bag slip from across his shoulder, Zuko took in a deep breath. The fire grew in his lungs, slowly rising the temperature around him. Some of the animals had just stirred, he was sure of it now. Resolute, he closed his eyes to focus on the burning breath in his lungs, gnawing at his strength.

In the dark he thought he could hear the crawling creatures sniggering at his efforts from their hiding. _Cowards. _The young prince gritted his teeth, letting all his disgust and rebellion shoot up his nerves and set the air ablaze.

When he reopened his eyes, the rhinos were raising their horned heads and watching him with a lazy curiosity. One of them even found the strength to let out a hungry moan from the far end of the room: the cracked complaint was Orm's, of course. Zuko shook his head, mentally cursing that damned beast that wouldn't ever think about anything but stuffing itself, really. Ignoring its protests, he waited till his task was done, till the body heat pouring down his arms and legs had made the metal warm under his boots, before heading back to the warehouse rooms.

It was probably due to the meditative exercise he had made in order to firebend, but in spite of his exhaustion, the young prince was breathing much more freely than before.

He had to make several trips to fill all the mangers. Only once did he stop running, long enough to break the ice in a barrel and quench his thirst. The prince also had to endure a good many reproachful moans, as well as Orm's dark tongue: the damn creature was trying to eat the slices of meat directly in his hands, not deterred in the slightest by the prospect of covering his young master with slobber.

Some animals were slower standing up: the firebender had to put his burning hands on their joints to reanimate them. Soon enough the room was humming with pleased groans, snores and sounds of chewing.

But one rhino wouldn't wake up.

Zuko gritted his teeth. For Agni knew how long he had been pressing his hands and arms against the great armour, letting his body heat penetrate to the animal's cold blood without getting any reaction. Tension and impatience were making his gestures feverish. At last one black eye painfully slit open: it was glassy, probably blind.

There was no reproach in the lifeless stare. However the deep exhaustion in it made the prince's desperate agitation seem oddly ridiculous. Like he could hear Azula's shrill laughter, delighted by the utter stupidity her brother was showing yet again, wasting his time and getting dirty in order to save some miserable beast that wouldn't even be of any use in this ice desert….

Zuko's hands clenched against the rock hard skin of the animal, without his taking notice.

There were many things he couldn't stand about his little sister, even after three years of exile. Her cruelty, of course, the sick need she had to act on it. Her manipulations. Her gift for lying. Her being gifted at all…

…and most of all, her being right way too often.

The komodo rhinos only lived in the Fire Nation and in the warmest regions of the Earth Kingdom. While they could endure a raid in the poles, they would never survive a long stay.

Most of the mounts had tucked their short legs under themselves and were slowly falling asleep, content with the room's sudden warmth. A warmth that poured freely out of the firebender's arteries, like water from a spring or blood from an open wound. But he wouldn't last long at such a rate.

And beyond the room there was nothing, nothing but a ship eaten away by rust, surrounded by monsters and miles of snow and ice….

Whatever he did, they would all die.

It was easy to find what he must do after that thought. Mere logic. Yet Zuko did his best to not think about it, to not think about anything, even when his fingers slipped under the stone hard frill and brushed the thin strip of skin on the ill mount's neck. Even when his hands grabbed his swords and pulled the blades from their sheath with a metallic hiss. Even when he encircled the dark, enormous head with his arms, avoiding the animal's tired look, iron pressed against the cold, elastic skin under the frill. One of the few flaws in the armour, where with one gesture he could drive his sword to its brain, fast enough, he hoped, for it to not feel any pain….

He struck. The rhino's head slowly fell on the prince's shoulder, nearly dislocating his knees with its weight. It closed its eyes, colourless lids on the hard grey face, as though turned into stone. With difficulty Zuko extricated his sword, then shook it once.

In the bitterest corners of his mind, he thought Azula would have surely laughed once again at this sorry excuse for a prince, heir of the greatest military nation in the world, who couldn't help flinching at the sight of a few dark drops falling to the floor. But he soon chased off the thought and went back to work.

Most of the rhinos died in their sleep; some didn't even move at all, legs tucked under their body, head bowed, quiet. There were no sign of his actions aside from the dark drops staining the floor, whose number slowly increased. The sword felt heavier and heavier as the minutes passed, hurting his wrist, as if a mere film of blood had been enough to double its weight. The teenager's throat was getting dry; an eerie tension was crawling up his spine, sinking into the back of his neck.

He felt like he was being watched. Frequently he would jerk round at an imaginary sound and search the darkness, looking for a movement in this room filled with corpses.

His footsteps were too loud. He shouldn't have decided to kill Orm last: the vague smell of death had roused him. When Zuko finally came to him, he was greeted by a sharp stare, bright with anxiety. Its muscles were moving under the giant armour, nostrils quivering, its tail nervously whipping the wall.

"Orm. Be still."

The young prince had managed to keep his voice firm. The mount obeyed with its usual discipline. However, when Zuko gripped one of its horns to lower its enormous head and reach the frill, he noticed that the komodo rhino hadn't stopped sniffing the air, crouched and tense, as though keeping watch. Its eyes were fixed on something behind its master, somewhere in the pitch-black room. A raucous growl vibrated in its throat and jaws.

And then Zuko heard them.

Not a hallucination, this time, nor the cracking of rust distorted by his worked up mind. They were furtive sounds, muffled sniggers, a slithering run in the dark, creeping along the walls, reverberating in a corner before disappearing. The sound itself seemed littered with rot; it made his hands clammy, knotted his entrails, froze his blood and breathing, gnawed at his every nerve.

He couldn't use his fire to attack those monsters or light the room; he couldn't bury his face in his hands and scream. He couldn't make any harsh gesture, lest Orm would sense his panic and go wild. So the young prince did nothing at all, only tightened his grip on the rhino's horn so his fingers wouldn't shake.

Orm's body towered above him like a cliff, like a stronghold between him and the monsters lying in wait in the dark.

But he would have to kill it, as well.

From the corner of his eye, he thought he could see shadows moving near the boxes, where the dark drops had fallen;

_Blood draws them. Blood, death, rot, fear, maybe it's what they were looking for from the __very start, those monsters, maybe it's what they feed on..._

Breathing hard, he pressed his face against his mount's, rough like a granite wall. Orm kept on growling, its nails anxiously raking the floor: it looked ready to charge into invisible foes. However Zuko knew it wouldn't move, it would follow the given orders as it always did. The firebender barely registered he was holding his sword against the animal's neck. He still wasn't trembling, but his left hand was gripping the horn so hard it hurt his knuckles.

"I'll kill them," he heard himself whisper to his mount, his voice almost as hoarse as its growl. "I won't let them drive me mad. I'm going to fight them, I swear I'll make them pay. They'll give me my uncle back. I'll burn them all down…."

He couldn't tell whether the words were doing him any good. He wasn't able to finish anyway, for his arm struck under the frill and the sword plunged into the listener. Finally Orm moved, if only to collapse in front of him.

For the twelfth time Zuko extricated his weapon and wiped the blood sticking to the blade, as if in a trance.

He was alone.


	9. For to dust you shall return 3

_**To Honour the moment**_

Author's note is going to be somewhat longer than usual. I hope you don't mind.

So. First of all, you guys really are awesome. Avocadolove, readers, reviewers, all of you. I'm not sure I deserve to be encouraged so much, but who cares! It feels great. I was also glad I could make you empathize with the rhinos, of all the Avatar characters (grins). When I wrote this scene, I was rather afraid people would blame me for making Zuko too sensitive. Killing war mounts when you must leave them behind so your enemies won't have them, or so they won't starve to death (I doubt animals this big can survive outside their natural environment) shouldn't be such a big deal in the Fire Nation. In my mind, it was supposed to be more practical killing than mercy killing. Zuko got so attached to the rhinos mainly because they were there when he was lonely and distressed. (And it's rather contagious: now people think I'm a weirdo because I find rhinos cute...)

Also, a short mea culpa for those who haven't already noticed that I'm a moron: hey genius, the sun doesn't rise if it's winter in the South Pole. I thought the creators of Avatar would disregard astronomy in a world where killing a freaking fish can make the moon disappear. I mean, if the spirit of the moon is on Earth, does that mean the spirit of the sun is as well? What would it be doing in a world much smaller and younger than it is? How come it's not stronger than the spirit of the moon? And if all spirits are situated on Earth, does it mean Earth is in the center of the universe?

I'm not too thrilled by the idea of making a compromise between spirits and science, so I hope it doesn't bother you too much if I keep disregarding astronomy. I should have been more observant when I started the fic though, and for that I'm sorry.

I think I'm done. Next chapter might take a while coming: I try to write a new French chapter every time I finish translating an older one. It's like, the rule, or something. I'm really sorry for all the delays. Hope you have a good reading!

* * *

Chapter 4: _For to dust you shall return (Part 3/3)_

_(Finally Orm moved, if only to collapse in front of him._

_For the twelfth time Zuko extricated his weapon and wiped the blood sticking to the blade, as if in a trance._

_He was alone.) _

A shivering flame rose in the centre of his palm, but there was nothing to see. It was already growing cold in the room. He couldn't smell the scent of the rhino's blood. Zuko sheathed his swords and picked up his shoulder bag with deliberate slowness, his eyes sweeping the room as though daring the monsters to appear.

He held his head high as he left the room and climbed up the ship's floors. Shrill sniggers kept taunting him from the walls. Sometimes the sound would be loud enough to cover his footsteps, even louder than the blood pounding against his temples.

He had almost made it to the outer wall when he finally cracked.

He dropped everything he was holding, spun round and punched the air with an infuriated cry. A burst of flame tore the darkness apart.

And this time, he really saw them.

It lasted barely a second. Sinuous movements along the rotten corridors, some kind of reptiles, their limbs a blur, as if merging with the dark. Tiny glowing eyes watched him sardonically before disappearing in the corner of the ceiling. The metal there was in a disastrous state, crumbling into rough stairs, baring the furnace's pipes to let them run alone in the dark. Zuko rushed towards them.

"Come out! You think I'll let you get away? Tell me what you did to Uncle!"

The rust fell apart under his boots as he climbed, yet he managed to grasp the miraculously intact piping and throw another fireball at his opponents. In this part of the ship several floors had already collapsed, and for a second a ghostly scenery appeared, enormous shreds of iron hanging off like twisted roots, brownish walls barely visible in the distance.

He thought he saw something move along the pipes, but his flame was already going out. A shrill laughter echoed in the dark.

Enraged, never thinking about consequences, Zuko tore off his boots with his free hand and hauled himself onto the largest pipe. He didn't feel the burn of the ice-cold metal under his toes. He started to run, head first into the void. The laughter doubled ahead of him.

Such hateful sounds. _Cowards, you're but a bunch of cowards, I order you to show yourself… _Unbearable cold against the sole of his bare feet, the pain of the rusty metal sticking to his skin. Plaintive creaks of the weakened iron, barely able to hold his weight. The world had lost its mind, asphyxiated by a darkness none of his flames could completely chase away.

He didn't know where he was heading. Surely the creatures knew it. He could hear them scoff at him and roar with laughter, couldn't stand it, _keep running, keep running, hurry and destroy them…_

His own speed was driving him forward. The path was too thin, too sharp, a lone metal string separating him from the rotting darkness. The ice cold air was biting his face. He thought he could feel the creatures slip under his very steps and sneak up his back, yet every time he created light he saw nothing but sardonic shadows running out of his field of vision, farther and farther away…

_Where is my uncle?_

His breath was too hot in the polar cold. Erratic. Hundreds of tiny eyes, glowing feverishly like hallucinations, opened and closed sporadically around him. The pipes were creaking; his feet hurt. He felt like his very path was collapsing in front of him, like he would run forever off balance, towards nothing. He could only light his way with short-lived, desperate flames. Their furious red and molten gold looked fragile among the great walls of rust, in the air as cold as a tomb that stuck the metal to his toes.

He didn't stop screaming, though with each passing second the sounds that came from his parched throat got hoarser and weaker. The glowing eyes seemed to mock his helplessness. He tried to go faster. The cold tore at his lungs as he breathed. Yet he couldn't reach them.

_Why do they flee at all?_

He couldn't stop running.

He couldn't hear the pounding of his steps against the pipe jagged with rust, nor the creaking of the ship, nothing but the deafening sound of his own heartbeats. If he could see them, just once, if only he could really see what they were, he wouldn't ever fear them. He would burn them all to the core, reduce them to ashes… Flames kept lighting and going out around him, barely guiding his chase.

He couldn't watch his step. The creatures kept laughing all around him, and maybe they ate his crew just like they ate the ship's foundations. Maybe they killed his _uncle_. He'd run after them to his death if he had to.

The fire was so hot on his fingers he didn't feel the warmth of his own blood, where scratches had cut into his skin.

He didn't notice the pipes getting more and more damaged as he went on. He didn't see the glowing eyes massing some yards ahead, didn't feel the metal sink slowly under him. He did hear the shrill laugh of his enemies, the dark scoffing reverberating in the air…but perhaps it was nothing but the grating of metal that could no longer hold his weight, nothing but his way crumbling into dust while the darkness itself, heavy with rust and frost, collapsed with a thundering roar.

Suddenly there were no footholds. His own weight dragged him down, crushed him as he fell along with his ship. The speed locked his throat and sucked up his breath. He couldn't think. Bits of iron scratched his hands and face. The dark had swallowed him: he could only make out the great, ghostly shapes of metal skeletons crumbling above and around him, with the terrible slowness of a nightmare.

He couldn't see the creatures, but they must still be there. In his panic he let a stream of flames dance in circles around him. For a second he thought he heard a scream. Short-lived fire followed him in his fall like the tail of a comet. Some of his attacks destroyed fragments of wall about to smash his skull, but he never noticed.

He let his burning hands slice through the air, and all of a sudden his fingers caught something solid: the serrated edge of a corridor the creatures hadn't yet destroyed.

The momentum of his fall seemed to explode in his hand. The pain nearly dislocated his bones. He barely felt the burning in his palm, deeply cut by the metal edge. A rivulet of blood ran down his arm all the way to his shoulder. Warm ashes cascaded down on him; he had no idea where they could come from. Tiny bits of iron hit his shaved head like a black hail.

Hanging in the dark, silent and almost calm, it took him more than one second to regain the use of his own mind. Lost and paralysed, thinking with vague wonder he just escaped death.

_So quiet._

Finally the ashes were the first to move again, sliding slowly down his back and arms. They were still warm against his palm: Zuko's fingers closed instinctively on a handful, letting the rest fall under him.

His fist remained stubbornly clenched around those few specks of dust, for no reason he could think of, even when he painfully heaved himself onto the corridor's remains.

At first his legs shook too much to hold his weight. He had to crawl as far from the void as he could. He held his arms close to his chest, both fists clenched, one on the blood oozing out of his palm, the other on a handful of warm ashes. Distant creaks reverberated in the dark, proofs that bits of iron kept falling to the bottom of the hull. Soon the entire ship would collapse.

Yet even those ominous sounds couldn't shake Zuko from the sudden sensation of silence. Of _quiet._

The laughter had stopped.

A large fragment of wall came crashing down at the far end of the corridor, pulling him out of his torpor. He really had to get out of here. His surroundings were still lost in a fog when Zuko stood up. He would never know how he managed to find his way in the crumbling maze, how he found the corridor in which he had left his belongings, slipped his scratched feet in his boots without unclenching his fists, and finally made a hole with his shoulder in the rotten hull to force his way outside.

The light of the South Pole was blinding after his time spent buried in iron. Zuko hurried to cross yards of rusty sludge, until he reached a patch of virgin snow that reflected the sun. Until he was surrounded by nothing but light. Even here, so far from the equator, even through a layer of cloud, he felt the rays soak into his flesh and warm his blood. Still dizzy, hardly feeling the cold, he went on.

And when, reaching the first glaciers, a deafening roar rang behind him, his ship crumbling into dust at last, he didn't look back.

His way to the village was nearly completely flat. Anyone coming to him was sure to be seen from miles away, and the Water Tribe people were no exception with their bulky blue parkas, standing out on the snow like fragments of sky.

So Zuko honestly couldn't tell how that peasant girl managed to appear so suddenly between the low dunes and charge him like a midget ram.

He didn't have the leisure to ponder the question though, for right when they collided a patch of ice materialized under his feet and he fell flat on the snow.

The girl staggered backwards, gripping her shoulder as though hurt by the impact, but she shouldn't be hurt, puffed out as she was by her winter clothes. Her breathing was ragged and loud. Her face seemed darker against the bright sky, nearly black: her features were hard to make out.

Zuko blinked. The snow was freezing his head. As baffled as he was pissed of, he propelled himself on his elbows to glare up at her.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Do you often attack people at random, you crazy peasant?"

"S-Shut up! How dare you complain?"

She took a step forward, hands clenched in her gloves. The move would have been a lot less impressive if Zuko wasn't already lying on the ground, in a snow that seemed to get colder with each passing second, too exhausted to even consider standing up.

"How dareyou come back here like it's all fine?" She went on, her voice a little firmer. "After what you did to Aang?"

It took the young prince a little while to understand that she was referring to the Avatar, and longer to remember what on earth she was talking about. His outburst, the fireball aimed for the airbender's head a few hours ago, all of this might as well have happened in a former life.

He felt like he hadn't seen daylight in weeks. He felt like his whole life had been swallowed in the crumbling ship, trapped in a tomb, and had left him empty and broken in the polar wind. He was shivering all the way to his bones (_Agni_, how hadn't he yet collapsed from sheer exhaustion…)

Too dizzy, Zuko was late to retort: before he could argue that the damn kid definitely _shouldn't _have followed him everywhere like some hamster-puppy (and his attack had missed, for Agni's sake, it wasn't like anyone was hurt!), the girl straightened, tense as though bracing herself to kick the prince in the shins. She opened her mouth and yelled, as clear and biting as she could:

"How come you're not ashamed? He's a kid! He never meant harm to anyone and he…damn you, he was actually worried about you while you were sick! And _you! _Not only are you not above threatening a child but you want to capture him as well? The Avatar? The only hope we have left? You're all the same! Don't you have a brain, don't you have a heart? Do you really all want the world to be at war forever? You…"

She hesitated, short of breath, seemingly looking for an offending enough word. "You filthy, horrible _monster_! Aang wanted to help you and that's how you thank him? By telling him you'll hunt him down for as long as you live?"

Zuko's ears were ringing. He considered retorting that he was _not _a monster, but something in those wide blue eyes stopped him. When he spoke at last, it was in a quiet tone, though tinged with challenge:

"At least he's been warned now, hasn't he?"

It probably wasn't the brightest thing to say in such circumstances. The snow shifted under him, carrying ice shards that felt uncomfortably sharp against his back. The girl's fists clenched convulsively.

"To think that we healed someone as repulsive as you… You may have firebended your way all around the world, but don't you dare think I'm afraid of you! If Gran Gran hadn't made us promise we wouldn't hurt you, I swear the Fire Nation would have to search at the bottom of the ocean to stick you back together!"

There would have been quite a few things to retort to those words: this peasant was hardly a threat after all, especially if her fighting skills didn't beat her brother's. Also, after what he had faced that day, he couldn't imagine what kind of opponent could still scare him.

Azula, perhaps. But this girl wasn't Azula.

His time spent in the ruins of the ship must have worn him out a lot more than he had thought, for in the end Zuko couldn't muster enough anger to stand up to this one girl. His gaze was drawn to the sporadic shifting of the snow instead, and for the first time her ability really struck him.

He had noticed it before, of course, but…

"You're a waterbender?"

The question seemed to cut the girl short. For a moment she just fixed him with a look of bafflement that, though Zuko still couldn't quite read it, seemed to have lost some of its aggression.

"I didn't know there were any of them left in the South Pole."

The girl's face immediately darkened. Zuko grimaced, realizing just _how _that sentence had sounded.

So very bright.

"I'm the last," she said. "So? Do you want to hand me over to your Fire Nation, as well as Aang? Destroy the entire village?"

"I'm not going to tell anyone about you," Zuko said, feeling bitten. He didn't like the way the girl said "your Fire Nation". "And who the hell said I wanted to do anything to your village?"

Yet again the girl was at a loss for words and could only stare at him as if melted snow had finally soaked into his brain. She quickly changed the subject:

"What have you been doing? We heard that giant ship collapse from the village! Don't tell me you went in that thing!"

"I did. I had to check something."

The argument was starting to clear his head. Zuko straightened himself a little more, leaning on his right fist. He had to bite back a yelp upon sinking his wounded hand in the snow, but he managed to go on:

"I found what made my ship rot! There were those things inside, some kind of spirits that look like lizards. Everything they touch turns into rust."

"Wh…what? If you have been hallucinating again, you should… And what did you do to your hand?" she asked all of a sudden, noticing the droplets of blood that stained the ground. "You cut yourself? Are you _stupid_?"

With those words the girl kneeled in front of him and snatched his hand, nearly causing him to collapse a second time. She then made him open out his fingers to have a better look at the wound, without worrying for a second about how much her grip _hurt _around the cut palm. Only when she started tearing strips of the prince's sleeve did she acknowledge his offended look.

"Don't you get ideas!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at him. "If it were just me, I'd do the same to the left hand! But Gran Gran didn't spend a whole week healing you so you could bleed to death because of some hallucination…"

"It was no hallucination!" Zuko protested. "You and all the villagers know damn well the ship wasn't here before I came, and that was barely ten days ago! I have been inside, it was still mostly intact: I even brought some of my things in case you wouldn't believe me, just _look_!"

With some difficulty Zuko passed the strap of the bag above his shoulder and handed it to her. It was wet with snow, but didn't seem to have suffered too much from the prince's fall.

"If some of it has been squashed, it's your fault." he muttered.

This time the girl was effectively left speechless. She slowly opened one of the wrappings, sniffing the food as though fearing the stranger's delirium might have become contagious. Then her gaze was drawn eastwards, somewhere far beyond her field of vision, where a ship had disappeared with all its secrets in a thick cloud of rust.

An imperceptible shiver ran down her spine, something that probably didn't have much to do with the cold.

"You have seen spirits in there…"

Her voice was but a breath. She probably wasn't expecting an answer, for before Zuko could open his mouth she took off her glove with her teeth and focused back on the firebender's hand. The little globe of water she bended to cleanse the wound was cold, but not as unbearably so as he had thought: for a moment it even seemed to ease the pain.

The hands holding his were small, very dark. Soft, too, even though her life as a peasant already had hardened the tip of her fingers. Sometimes they would shake a little, perhaps out of fear.

But never as much as Zuko's did between hers.

The only living beings he had touched recently, he had had to kill them. He was exhausted beyond measure. Dust still irritated his throat; rust had embedded under his nails. He felt like a hundred years had passed since he last touched a human hand.

He looked away.

The girl (what was her name again?) tended to his wound in silence, looking sullen, or maybe just concentrating. She bandaged his palm a little tighter than was strictly necessary, her round, dark face still set in a frown, and said:

"The other cuts don't look that deep, you'll take care of them yourself. Cleanse them well or it could become infected. You realize how stupid it was of you to go in such a place, do you?"

Oddly enough, the last remark stung Zuko. He too started looking eastwards. And then, almost against his will, words came out in a breath, words he hadn't dared think about yet:

"But now I know I can find Uncle…"

He felt the girl's hands tense against his. This time it was she who looked away and to the ground.

"I thought…you said those spirits…"

"I fought them!" he cut her off, unable to stand the doubt in her voice. "They're not invincible. Those creatures…they ran away from me at some point. They fear fire. I even destroyed some of them. If _I _can reduce those things to ashes, then my uncle can't have been killed by them!"

Fingers trembling, he opened up his left hand. A trickle of black dust fell noiselessly to the ground.

It was too light, and way too greasy, to be mistaken for rust.

The young peasant watched it seep through Zuko's fingers, eyes wide with surprise. They were still kneeling side by side in the snow, neither of them feeling the cold. She hadn't put her gloves back on, and even seemed to have momentarily forgotten to hate him.

There still was way too much doubt in her eyes, though. Zuko held out his hand to her (for Agni's sake, why couldn't he remember her name?), unbounded determination on his own face.

"You have to understand! My uncle is a hero of war; in the Earth Kingdom they know him as the Dragon of the West. He's one of the best firebenders in the world, and he's the one who has been teaching me for the past three years. If I could escape from those spirits, then so could he!"

Puffs of steam came out of his mouth with each word. They gave him strength, rekindled the furnace in his lungs. Even his right hand didn't hurt so much any longer. Somehow, his own doubts faded bit by bit as he tried to convince the waterbender girl.

"My men, Uncle… I still don't know what happened to them. But they're alive, somewhere. And those creatures won't stop me from finding them."

The girl didn't nod in agreement. Yet she listened to him to the end, a serious expression on her face. And when Zuko tipped his hand to let the rest of the ashes fall, she brought her fingers closer and watched the black dust seep through her own fingers, soft and grim, until it was lost in the ice field's endless white.


	10. Back where the way collapses 1

_**To Honour the moment**_

Still alive! And doing an internship abroad all summer, so at least my spoken english should get better!

I am already not making sense, and tonight I am to tired to even thank you like I would like to. But thank you so much. I still cannot believe that people keep enjoying this fic despite reading two chapters per year... The part involving Katara was not as subtile as I would have liked it to be: I have some trouble with writing about her, and TrisakAminaw was kind of right to complain about her snarling so much. It's hard to sort her personality out among all the clichés that have been build around her.

The thing is, her relation to Zuko and thus her anger towards him is supposed to be very different from the actual show. She does not fear him. She saw him ill, she saw him recover among them. Now she does not have enough imagination to seriously think he will hurt anyone. He is not an enemy, but he acts like a complete jerk: her anger towards him is both more violent and a lot less serious than in the series. I am not sure I am explaining myself well. I hope you felt some of it in the last chapter. All those differences in the relationships will be addressed at some point anyways, because that's so interesting!

Too long. Special thanks to Avocadolove for beta-reading and to Lunatique for some great discussions. Have a good reading!

* * *

Chapter 5: _Back where the road collapses (1/3)_

He had never flown before.

The chilling wind was gusting up his sleeves and against his chest, as though trying to drag him towards the edge. Great clouds were passing him by, surreally close. The world spread beneath them looked very small in comparison, shining like a field of jewels in the morning light. His every breath lashed against his lungs, felt like his very first. Everything was new, and yet so natural, why, why had he never flown before…

It was a move he should have known his whole life. It felt like, rather than being carried by the motion of six gigantic legs, he had been lifted from the ground by the strength of his inner fire, or by the sunlight bathing his face.

It felt like the white bison could change course and leave him behind: with hardly an effort the firebender would hold himself above the seas, up and free in the morning light. He had spread out his arms, letting the polar wind wrap around him and revive the fire inside his lungs.

"Isn't it great?"

His eyes shot open upon hearing the high-pitched voice, half lost among the whistling of the wind in his ears. At once he found himself staring at the idiotic smile of a kid dressed like a travelling performer, looking at him with eyes too big for his face.

"Kuzon loved flying, too: he said it made him feel closer to the sun. I could spend all my life up here with Appa!"

Zuko's face hardened. The moment was gone. Suddenly self-conscious, he dropped into a sitting position in the far back of the saddle and resumed studying endless expanses of snow with a vengeance.

The air was cold, brisk, but even the exhilaration of speed could no longer soften the crease between his brows.

He was fed up with this kid chattering about his best friend. He hated hearing his stupid, unceasing comparisons between that stranger and himself, all because both were born in the Fire Nation. As though this one coincidence was enough to make him the reincarnation of this Kuzon.

He also hated having to _agree_ with the boy.

Annoyingly enough, the young airbender seemed to have decided he was going to be cheerful all day. Shading his eyes from the snow's brightness with his hand, the boy started examining the glaciers as well. He had not stopped talking.

"Sometimes we would fly several days without resting. We were exhausted after that, right, Appa? What's great about flying is that we can go wherever we like and make friends all around the world! You too must have travelled a great deal on your ship, right? I bet this place isn't one of your favourites: it's way too cold for a firebender. Hey, there are a lot of glaciers over there. Do you want to have a look?"

Zuko nodded without looking at him. He was already leaning over the saddle, as though eager to lose himself among the paths, pits and tunnels of the bluish maze. If he raised his head, he would have to see this encouraging, friendly smile yet again. His hands gripped the leather as if to tear it apart.

If screams and threats could not convince this kid that they were enemies, for Agni's sake, what was he supposed to _do_?

It would have been simpler, and a lot less humiliating, if he had been able to refuse his help.

A week had passed since his expedition in the rotting remains of his ship. When he had discovered the ghostly reptiles that had eaten into its foundations, and ultimately destroyed it. Zuko had spent all of his days (and most of his nights) looking for his crew. Studying the legends from the Water Tribe had proved fruitless: none of them mentioned monsters that could turn iron into rust. As for the few creatures that had the slightest common traits with his own visions, they haunted tales as varied as they were unlikely:

Vampiric beings hiding in the hunters' shadows and sucking their strength until they collapsed in the snow. Spirits coming with the fog, demanding tribute for a pact made centuries before with an evil god. Cursed by a queen, an unfaithful lover was hunted down to the far reaches of the ocean by a woman whose long neck held the face of a reptile.

None of this helped him much. And he would not stoop so low as to ask the villagers for details. So now he spent his days searching the coasts, hoping his uncle and his crew had found somewhere to take refuge.

But he got tired too fast in this endless snow. He could not recognize the places where the ice was thinner and might not hold his weight. Worse, snowfalls could at any moment cover his tracks and make him lose his way. And then he too would be trapped in this shimmering maze, as large as a land, where even the wind was foreign.

It was a dangerous task, but mostly a boring one. Each day of fruitless exploration resembled the others: in the end everything seemed to merge into one endless ice ribbon, a growing fear that weighed on his shoulders and steps. _Two weeks, Agni, how would they ever survive, it was already more than two weeks since they had vanished in this forsaken land…_

It was at the end of one of those days that the Avatar had come to him. Too tired to even feel the cold, the young prince had only found the strength to sit against the village's small fortification and listen to the soft whizzing of his breath. All of a sudden a round face with enormous eyes had appeared in front of him. And from that face, grinning childishly from ear to ear, had fallen the absurd proposal:

"_It's your crew __that you're looking for, right? Why didn't you just ask for help? It will be a lot faster with Appa, and less exhausting. We wanted to go and explore the South pole anyways. We could all go together!"_

Zuko had not had the energy to throw fire at him at the time. Yet he had thought he had yelled loud enough to get the kid back to his senses.

And if a small, serious frown had crossed the airbender's face before he ran away, making him seem almost grave, the prince had not bothered to notice.

However, at dawn the next morning, a bison had blocked his way out of the village. The Avatar was facing him, standing firm with his arms crossed over his narrow chest, the same serious expression on his too young face. Strangely enough, he had not seemed so frail in the half light, bothered neither by the biting cold nor by their height difference. His voice had not shaken as he spoke:

"_I'm coming with you."_

_Get out of my way._

"_I won't: you need to rescue those men. I will help you."_

_Your help? Do you think I'm a traitor? I told you, get out of my sight! You are wasting my time!_

"_But you can't search for them alone! There are too many places you won't be able to reach on foot. And it's way too exhausting: even if you did find your men, you wouldn't be able to bring them to safety. We will need Appa to carry them. It's a lot more important than your treason thing, don't you understand?"_

_(Zuko__ would not admit that he was right. He refused to admit it out loud.)_

The Avatar had lost his strange confidence during his speech. His fists had clenched, his voice had become thinner, more urgent. Almost a plea, and Zuko _hated _this more than anything else, the feeling of speaking to a distraught child rather than to his hereditary fiend. He had no time for this. For Agni's sake, what was he supposed to _do _in such a situation?

Meanwhile the bison, as though feeling his young master's distress, had started to moan softly next to them. The boy had leaned against his enormous breast, and said in a resigned tone:

"_It's not like you can keep me from helping them anyways. I will go look for them myself, if I have to. Maybe Katara will come with me, if I ask her. But I think it would be better if you came, instead."_

For some reason, it was the prospect of getting the girl involved in all this, her likely reaction if she were to learn that he had put his honour before his men's safety (or maybe worse, if she were to know he had been fighting with the Avatar yet again), that had made him yield in the end, heart aching, pride hurt beyond all measure.

And now there he was, siding with a twelve-year-old enemy who seemed set on clinging to him until it drove him mad, whose strange mount could cover in less than an hour what would have been a whole day of walking. Zuko shook his head.

Call it a truce. He did not want to think about it now.

The bison had come closer to the glaciers spiking the ground. Walls of ice surrounded them, tall and cold, their distorted flanks throwing livid reflections. Zuko did not like the light that fell on them. It became bluish as it went through the icebergs. It appeared unpredictably, coming out of the holes, cracks and tunnels, shining with a somewhat eerie beauty. No one could tell what it might have crossed underground.

Perhaps the Avatar was suffering from the same impression. A shadow crossed his features every time they came near one of those tunnels, as if he too was wondering what could be hidden there, somehow living in the cold. Every time Zuko thought he had spotted footsteps or melted snow among the ice sculptures, and jumped off the saddle to investigate, the boy stopped his mount without a word of protest, but his hands remained tightly clenched on the reins.

"There doesn't seem to be anything in there…"

The prince only frowned in response, a gesture which could not much impress the boy since Zuko was turning his back on him. He took another step inside the cave, his fingers lightly touching the wall, but his carefulness was bitter. Of course there was nothing. Nothing but the halting sound of his breath, the faint wisps of steam coming out of his mouth and the slight crunch of snow under the sole of his boots.

He had liked the sound, when he had taken his first step on the South Pole, but that was a long time ago. Right now it felt almost repulsive, on the contrary, as though something he could not see was creeping under the snow.

He was doing his best not to grip the wall, lest he would melt something, but in Agni's name, what the hell did it matter if there were no clues to be found in this stupid cave! In his rage he nearly punched the wall, but the whole tunnel might collapse on him. His hand was shaking, pale against the pale snow: only the tip of his fingers, darkened by rust, gave some contrast.

Zuko had never managed to get completely rid of the rotten iron that had settled on his skin back in the ruins of his ship. Despite all his efforts, a few marks always remained, dirty black, embedded in tiny furrows under the nails of his hands and feet where he could not reach them.

It never seemed to fester.

Having some dirt get the better of him annoyed him nonetheless.

"We should go back now," the boy said behind him. "We haven't eaten yet; we won't do a good job of looking for them if we're hungry. Also, we've been searching this area for hours: they probably never went here."

Once again, Zuko did not answer. The careful, reasonable tone the Avatar was using sounded too much like his uncle's advice, and if there was one thing he _really _did not need at the moment, it was his nation's enemy starting to remind him of his own family.

He was even tempted to completely ignore him and go farther into the cave. Why on earth should he obey that kid anyway? However the tunnel spreading in front of him seemed to grow colder and colder as the minutes passed, darker, a bluish half-light that made him feel like he was getting lost in the bottom of the ocean. The wind snaking along the tunnel was whistling strangely, mocking or plaintive.

And there was no one in there, anyway.

That is why, with all the dignity he could muster, Zuko peeled his hand off the melting wall and turned away from the cave. He went back to the saddle with his head held up high, trying to stifle the vague feeling at the back of his neck, the feeling of being watched.

"I'm not giving up," he said between clenched teeth as the bison ascended above the ice maze. "We haven't searched the coast enough up north. Nor inland. They must be somewhere near, they have to be…"

His eyes did not leave the ground, but sadly it did not keep him from feeling the young airbender's gaze, weighing on him with this stupid sympathy he could not shake off. There was a short silence.

"You want to know what I'm thinking?" the boy said.

He didn't give a damn, but the kid went on without waiting for an answer:

"I think your crew already found a way to leave the South pole."

Zuko whirled around so suddenly he had to grip the saddle to not fall overboard. At first the sea spray whipping his face prevented him from making out the boy's expression. His orange outfit, however, was clearly visible, flapping against the wind in a quiet rustle, like sails in the distance.

He was smiling, a tinier smile than before.

"Yesterday I flew above most of the South pole with Appa. I'm almost sure there was nothing. And you already searched all the coasts around your ship. If they really were lost and had ended up…I mean…even like this, we would have found traces, don't you think? I think they managed to leave."

The silence that followed was heavy and hurt.

"You _idiot_," Zuko said quietly. "You think I never thought of that? I checked the steamboat inside my ship the very first day. None were missing. What do you think? That they swam all the way to the Earth Kingdom?"

"Look, I'm trying! There could be other places where you can find boats around here. I don't know. I think they survived, and I think they aren't here anymore. I'm the Avatar after all, right? I should be able to sense these kinds of things."

Zuko jumped at his last words. His nails were digging into the saddle without him taking notice. He was looking at those pale blue arrows painted on the boy's forehead, on the back of his hands, intently, as though he was seeing them for the first time. What they meant.

The Avatar. The bridge between the Spirit world and their own.

He tried to breath in deep to quieten the sudden racing of his heart. The air tasted like ice and salt.

"Can you feel it?" he asked at last, his voice hardly more than a breath. "Hear their spirits? Can you tell whether they…whether they are dead or not?"

"No! Not exactly… I should have started my training as the Avatar when I turned sixteen, but…now that I've been frozen a hundred years in this iceberg, there isn't anyone left to teach me. I'm sorry. I don't know how to talk to spirits."

"But still," the monk went on, "if someone had died here recently, especially a firebender in the middle of the South pole… Don't you think his spirit would be angry or afraid? And wouldn't he try to attract our attention if we came near? I can't have missed so many of them. I think I would have noticed at least some of your men, if they were dead."

Zuko shrugged, trying to feel as disdainful as he should towards this blatant amateurism. As if _suppositions _would be enough to save his uncle from this hellish land…

But despite it all, a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Pale sunlight was pouring on his face. Arms dangling over the saddle, Zuko tilted his head back towards the sun and the highest clouds. The bite of cold was almost bearable, now that he was away from the oppressing shadows of the cave. He closed his eyes.

He had moved to the front of the saddle, at some point in his conversation with the Avatar. He was now barely a yard away from the airbender, and did not feel like moving yet. The kid kept throwing him glances from the corner of his eyes, but even those were not enough to anger him now. Perhaps it was the altitude.

"Actually Zuko, I wanted to thank you."

The assertion was so absurd it temporarily made the young prince forget all sense of dignity. All he could do was open his eyes wide, astonished, barely making out the Avatar's face among the clouds, head upside down like a complete fool. The airbender went on unperturbed:

"It's true that I was angry at first. Do you remember that time when we spoke together in the tent, while you were ill? I thought you wanted to help me hide, that you understood. And barely a week later you were screaming who I was to the whole village. I wanted them to think I was normal. I didn't want people to act different around me; I didn't want _Katara _to be different. I was…afraid. But I've been thinking about all this. And also about what you're trying to do for your men."

With those words, the upside down Avatar smiled at him, the corners of his mouth strangely stretching downwards.

"You are doing your best to find them, even if it's hard, even if you have no idea how to do it. Because they need your help. That's how I should have seen things from the start, really: it doesn't matter whether I wanted it or not, I'm still the Avatar. So I guess I'm responsible for the harmony between the elements. I know…I know Katara is counting on me to stop the war. I should never have run away. I wish I could have been as brave as you are, a hundred years ago. I will try to be brave now."

That was both the most flattering and the most unexpected compliment he had gotten for years. At first it made Zuko slightly dizzy, and he kept staring at him dumbly without saying a word. Damn this wind that filled him with oxygen and kept him from getting angry like he wanted. For the situation was, above everything, unbearably ironic: when would this moronic Avatar understand that he was looking for his men _just so _he could capture and stop him? Yet the boy kept smiling at him with an absurd hope, as though gazing at a lighthouse beacon.

"So…" the airbender said after a while, as the older boy still had not moved, "I guess I really will have to fight against the Fire Nation, right?"

Zuko managed to frown at those words. It was about time.

"You are our enemy. And we have grown much stronger than a hundred years ago, trust me."

"Your enemy. Okay. Still, it's so weird…"

Sudden fear. The boy whirled towards the prince's disfigured face, watching him with an expression which, at last, looked like anxiety.

"Are you going to tell the Fire Nation's army? That I…that the Avatar is alive?"

"No."

And, as the kid was letting out a relieved sigh, he warned:

"I'm the one who will capture you. Until then, no one needs to know you exist."

That did not seem to spoil the airbender's mood in the least. Slightly offended, Zuko straightened up and crossed his arms on his chest. The glaciers they had been searching were disappearing in the horizon. The bison was now flying very close to the shore, where the waves crashing against the ice shaped it into a surreal landscape. Zuko kept his eyes on this endless white, mulishly.

The last thing he wanted was to talk again, but the young monk behind him would not shut up. Zuko was starting to wonder whether all the Air Nomads, hidden at the tops of their impregnable mountains, had been as unbearably talkative as that kid.

"But even if you do that..." he said, "isn't there a risk that I will put the Southern Water Tribe in danger? If the Fire Nation learns that they are hiding me…"

For some reason, this time Zuko could not answer right away. He did not look at him as he said, carefully neutral:

"It's probable."

"Oh…"

At first the monk did not add anything. In the silence that followed Zuko had to fight off the stupid impulse to turn his head, just to see which expression was now showing on the kid's face, in his too big grey eyes.

"What if I leave the village? I can't stay here if I want to save the world anyway. If I leave, will they be safe? Katara, Sokka, everyone?"

"I…I think they will," the prince answered (and why on earth was it suddenly so difficult to find his words? It was ridiculous…) "It is my mission to capture the Avatar. I'm not after _them_, and I don't… The Fire Nation will know nothing of the help those peasants might have given you. I won't waste my time worrying about every other place you stop by," he added quickly, lest the other boy would actually think he was trying to cover up for an enemy village.

"Great!" the airbender said, suddenly as enthusiastic as if the future had never looked brighter. "So Appa and I will help you find your men, and in exchange you will make sure nothing happens to the Southern Water Tribe. We have a deal!"

And strangely enough, those words lifted his mood, washing off some of the loathing he had felt since dawn, since he had first climbed on the damn bison and accepted the help of the Avatar, the very person he intended to hunt down. Like some honourless coward, ready to beg his own enemies as soon as a difficulty came up…

A deal. The life of his men against the South pole's peasants'. His actions did not seem so shameful in that light. Almost reasonable. Almost clever.

Almost something his uncle would have been proud of.

He gazed at the icebergs lining around the coasts, sparkling in the morning light. The bison seemed to be in form: he was carrying them above the waves with impressive speed, whipping their faces with salty air, stretching its large legs with satisfied grunts. Flames were running down the prince's veins, his skin burning hot against the wind. But he was not ill, any longer. Calmer, Zuko was even able to think about his uncle, his presence, his reassuring smile. He found himself imagining his questions and nods, as his nephew would tell him everything that had happened since their separation, the smell of the jasmine tea the old man would surely force him to drink when everything would be over.

_Perhaps he and his men had already found__ a way to leave the South pole._


	11. Back where the way collapses 2

_**To Honour the moment**_

Hi everyone!

I have got some bad news: from now on Avocadolove will be to busy to be my beta-reader. I thank her deeply for all the great advice she has given me all this time. I did my best to make this chapter readable, and my sister Nadramon also hepled (thank you sis!), but I'm really not sure it was enough. So if you spot too many mistakes, I highly encourage you to be merciless with me, because I need to improve my translating skills, and fast!

On a related note, I have been wondering for some time whether I should correct the prolog, "Shattering time", since I posted it before Avocadolove became my beta-reader. As my first attempt at translating, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. However some people have told me that they liked the feeling of strangeness the weird phrasing induces, since it is a dream sequence and all. So I thought I should ask you before I change anything.

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! (Special thanks to gerro for his/her monster of a review. Wow *_*) My eternal gratitude goes to Lunatique, who agreed to "omega-read' this chapter. Here is the corrected version (any remaining mistake is purely mine):

* * *

Chapter 5: _Back where the way collapses (2/3)_

Every time the flying bison landed near the village's wall, it got immediately surrounded by a small, enthusiastic crowd. It hadn't taken long for the children of the tribe to get used to the six-legged white monster. Now they spent as much time as possible climbing it from all sides, or playing with its young owner.

On that day, they had a moment's hesitation upon seeing a frowning firebender jump down their favourite playground with a distant look on his face. However the intruder, though he did scream pretty loudly and often blew steam out of his too-pale nostrils, didn't look so much like the skeleton faced monsters their parents would describe with such loathing. What's more, the children had seen him ill, even sound asleep: all in all his dangerousness was rather abstract.

Thus, they quickly forgot his presence and threw themselves on Appa with delighted shrieks. Soon the airbender himself was getting submerged by small blue parkas, laughing harder than everyone else. Carefully, Zuko started walking away.

"So _that's_ where you've been all this time. Seriously, don't tell me you of all people took up playing with this giant fur ball?"

The prince jumped and threw the peasant a murderous look. He hadn't noticed the taller, quieter boy among the group of overexcited kids running about. The teenager was standing some distance away, wrinkling his nose at him in disapproval. His body seemed oddly deformed by the thick furs he wore. He was holding a spear; an old-looking sleigh laden with two bags lay at his feet.

"I'm _not_ playing, you idiot," Zuko said in a vexed tone. "I'm looking for my men. Some of us actually have important things to do, you know."

"What, _I'm_ an idiot? Have you even seen yourself with the canoe the other day? I never saw anyone so worthless with an oar, you nearly threw us overboard!"

"That again? _You _insisted I should use the stupid shapeless thing! Can't you Water Tribe people use paddles like everyone else? That whole fishing plan of yours was ridiculous anyway. And I did _not _throw us overboard!"

They went on arguing. The canoe event came up almost every time the Water Tribe boy would start talking to him (Zuko was not sure he remembered his name: Kossa, Sokka, or something equally strange). The prince honestly couldn't understand why this half crazy, xenophobic peasant insisted so much on bringing up the subject, since _he_ was obviously the one who had acted like a complete fool on that day.

That the villagers tended to give him works way under his status was one thing. During his convalescence, the old lady who had healed him would give him a few simple tasks, rekindle the fire, sharpen knives or spears; she had even tried to have him mend a net, though that one hadn't gone too well. At the time he had been too grateful for something to occupy his hands and his feverish mind to protest.

Afterwards the habit had just clung, and he didn't know what to do about it: since his recovery they would give him the works that demanded the most physical strength, _peasant_'s work, but there was no man left in this village. And it wasn't like he could let old women do it in his place; it would only give Kossa, or whatever his name was, an occasion to mess with him and call him a weakling.

Four days ago however, the peasant had gotten it into his head to go fishing for some particular specie which, he said, could only be found in narrow channels surrounded by icebergs. Thus two men were needed, one to hold the spear and another to keep their boat from crashing into the ice. Zuko hadn't felt the least bit concerned. He had curtly advised him to take his sister along; she seemed in the mood for impaling fish these days. However Kossa had stared at him like he had just said something not only stupid, but blasphemous. Apparently the success of his project highly depended on the gender of both fishermen, go figure.

In spite of the overall stupidity of the situation, things still might have gone well: Zuko had slowly gotten used to the rudimentary weapon the peasant had put in his hands. There was even some kind of contentment in feeling his arm jolt slightly every time the tip of the spear would reach the target. It was basic, mechanical, and a lot less disturbing than running after ghosts in the ruins of his ship…

So really, the fact that the project had turned to a near disaster could only be blamed on this Kossa person, who had loudly complained that _he _could catch way more fish way faster and that Zuko was making them waste their time, and who had ultimately snatched the spear from his hands and let him do the steerage. The young prince could handle a kayak rather well, but the strange craft holding them was _not _a kayak, and as for the thinghe was supposed to use as a navigating tool, he couldn't even begin to describe it.

The two teenagers had come back in a terrible mood, completely drenched, and with half of their catch lost.

But he had _not _thrown them overboard!

"What on earth do you want this time?" Zuko asked, crossing his arms when it became clear that the peasant wouldn't leave him alone. "You had better not tell me you need me again for one of your ridiculous plans."

"My plans are _not _ridiculous! And if you think it's any fun for me to team up with pretentious Fire Nation jerks… But as I'll let you know, I too have important things to think about. Find the food to keep my village alive, for starters. And you had better help with it, 'cause in case you haven't noticed, you eat like an arctic horse."

Zuko tried to reply: the damned idiot was a fine one to talk about _that_, and he wasn't even a firebender, or anything that could explain his gluttony. However the brown, angular face of the Water Tribe boy was lighting up: it seemed they had come to the reason he was here at all. He went on without giving the prince any time to react:

"I went on reconnaissance yesterday: there is a whole herd of walrus caribous that got out of the water, I never saw that so long before spring! No way are we missing an occasion like that. We get one, period. Some had tusks and antlers of four feet at least, can you imagine?"

Kossa was getting more and more excited as he talked, waving his arms to punctuate his sentences, pointing at the horizon with his spear like he really expected some galloping herd to suddenly appear between the snow hills. Zuko remained stony-faced.

No, he could not imagine. He had absolutely no idea what a "walrus caribou" might be and frankly, he couldn't care less. This peasant's obsession with hunting, and meat in general, was getting a little more grating with each passing day. Zuko was cold and hungry after his search this morning, and he had more important things to focus on than play caveman.

However one part of the Water Tribe boy's speech made him lift his head despite himself and ask, frowning slightly:

"Four-foot long tusks? A _herd_? Are you sure those things are meant to be hunted by two people?"

The peasant paused, biting his lower lip for a second, but he managed to keep his tone firm:

"First things first, walrus caribous are not "things", they are meat, so show them a little respect. And no, you don't _exactly _hunt them with two people if you can avoid it. Ideally we should be ten. But I have a plan and it's gonna work, so it's okay. Why, you afraid?"

"Of course not!" the prince retorted, immediately reacting to the hint of challenge in the teenager's voice. "Why would I be afraid of an animal? I just don't trust your stupid plans!"

"Hey! My stupid plan found some use for your fire tricks, you should be grateful. It's better than steaming like a cooking pot all day. And it's not like anyone cares about your opinion: you're here, Gran Gran healed you, don'task me why, so now you help."

Zuko didn't answer, arms still crossed over his chest in a resolutely disapproving way, but not exactly disagreeing with his reasoning.

The prince hadn't tried to leave yet; that puzzled him a little.

"Your flames," the peasant went on. "How far can you throw them?"

"It _depends_, you fool. On the position of the sun, and whether it is cloudy or snowing, among other things. You really don't know anything."

"And how do you expect me to know anything about it, jerkbender? Do I look like a firebending _fan_, do you think the soldiers give us textbooks about it during raids? Let's say in bad conditions."

"When I am fighting at night, about twenty feet. I can go to thirty if I prepare with a kata."

Kossa took some time to think, his lips moving silently as though mouthing calculations. He was holding his chin in his gloved hand, looking like he regretted not having a beard he could stroke thoughtfully.

"That would be cool, thirty feet," he finally said. "The farther the better. Does it take long, this kata of yours?"

"A few seconds," Zuko said, growing impatient. "Why, is that important for your plan? What do you have in mind?"

A smirk broke the peasant's face, showing very white teeth on his dark face. With his ice blue eyes, wide with enthusiasm, he really looked like a lunatic. Zuko had to refrain from stepping back.

"Aha!" the peasant exclaimed, victoriously pointing his spear in the prince's direction. "Now you're interested in my plan! See? My ideas are brilliant."

"I never _said _I was interested," Zuko replied dryly. "Are you going to answer or not?"

"I'll tell you on the way," the other said, still smiling. "We're leaving right now, I already warned every one. There's some food in this bag, you'll eat while walking. Gotta hurry up. We were _supposed _to set off this morning, but of course you had to go and play with the bison…"

"For the last time, I was _not _playing with that thing!"

"Whatever. What's your problem anyway, still had something to do in the village?"

Out of reflex Zuko turned to the opening in the small snow fortifications, from which loud laughter could be heard. The flying bison was lying blissfully among the tents, letting children dig their arms into its fur or slide down its flank. The Avatar was looking at them a few feet away, the Water Tribe girl by his side, the one whose eyes reminded him of the ocean from his homeland, whose name was Katara, and who hated him.

Both were laughing to tears, but when her eyes met Zuko's her neck stiffened, and her expression froze. The prince quickly turned on his heel.

"Why are we taking this sleigh anyway?" he said, grasping one of the straps. "It would be easier to just carry the bags."

"Yeah, great idea. And the walrus caribou? Are you planning to bring it all the way to the village on your back? You don't know anything, either. It would have been better if we had some polar fox dogs to pull it, alright. But our last one died two months ago. We couldn't feed it any longer."

The peasant had grown quieter with his last sentence, a little more worried. He was tying the rope around his waist without looking at him, pale eyes fixing some invisible point among the endless ice.

"We have to make do now…"

Zuko didn't answer: he wasn't exactly in any position to sympathize with the difficulties of the Water Tribe. He was also distracted by his own rope which, on close examination, looked alarmingly like a piece of entrails taken out of some large beast from this crazy land.

Kossa was the first to move again, taking a slice of dried meat from one of the bags and holding it out to the prince with a shrug.

"I've got nothing against pulling the sleigh, mind you. There can even be some advantages: good way to test you a little. We'll see whether you're man enough to keep up with me."

At those words, Zuko couldn't hold back the smirk that formed on his lips and brightened his eyes. Kossa was smaller than he was, and clearly skinnier. The firebender tied himself to the sleigh as well and, having eaten nothing since dawn, bit fiercely into the offered food.

It was close to noon now: the sun had risen high above the ground; the blood that flowed along his arteries drew fire patterns against his bones. The meat disappeared quickly in his hands.

"Keep up with _you_?" he asked, already walking ahead of the other boy on the packed snow. "You were the one who got flattened when you charged me with that spear, if I remember correctly. Care for a rematch?"

Zuko had never been too good at influencing others, but this time the provocation proved to be effective. For hours on end the strange team, two poorly matched hunters, red and blue on the blinding white of snow, dashed between the dunes without slowing down. The two teenagers were almost running on the treacherous ground that gave under their steps, exchanging challenging glances, watching for the first sign of tiredness.

The young prince was stronger and had more stamina than his opponent. His muscles warmed his skin as they contracted and gave impulse to his every step. He liked the feeling, in this frozen wasteland where every gust of wind pierced him to the bone. He felt like he could go on that way for days on end.

Still, Kossa was holding his own. This land was his, and he moved with confidence, finding with one glance the places where the ground was best packed. Sometimes he would even throw his rival a mocking glance as Zuko sank to the knee in the snow. And every time it happened Zuko would free himself, his eyes ablaze, and he would suddenly accelerate in retaliation. Clouds of steam were coming out of their mouths, sporadically, twisting around their faces without their noticing.

Neither would have ever admitted it, but in months, maybe years, they had never had so much fun.

After a long while the game ended, the Water Tribe peasant stopping to point at the ground, where tracks were spreading in front of them, still quite clear. Zuko looked at the incomprehensible traces with curiosity: they were large, sinuous, as though giant komodo snakes had been uncharacteristically crawling on the snow. They were made by flippers, Kossa explained, so no wonder it didn't really look like anything. The walrus caribous must have come this way yesterday night, damn, check out all those prints, I can't believe they all came out of the water in winter, and will you hurry up? What if we miss them?

The young hunter was already dragging him forward, now seized with panic. Zuko followed, slower than before. He kept glancing at the trail. Large creatures, like he had expected, but he couldn't guess their weight from those traces. Six hundred pounds? More?

"You still haven't told me anything about your plan," he said, cutting Kossa off in his anxious muttering. "If you really need my help for this nonsense, I would at least like to know what I'm supposed to do."

The peasant threw him an offended look, but slowed down a little.

"Yeah, guess so," he said. "We're a bit short on effectives, can't really afford not to be prepared. See, the walrus caribous always go in herds. You can't just go and attack them, they don't look like it but they can charge you real fast, just wait and see…well, _don't _see, you know what I mean. What we have to do is scare them and make them run to a narrow passageway, so they'll have to outdistance each other. Then we can get one. Of course, usually many hunters have to work together to scare the whole herd and make them run in the right direction. That's where you come into play, you and your magic flames…"

"For the last time, they are _not _magic!"

But Kossa merely shrugged and went on with his explanations, making wild gestures with his spear. He mentioned the "magic flames" several times again, Zuko was convinced the damn fool was doing it on purpose.

The landscape around them wouldn't change. The creeping twilight barely coloured the ground with a faint yellowish glow. Unpleasant. In a way he was grateful for the peasant's chatter. Being angry at him was a comforting distraction from the feeling he had of not progressing at all in this crushing, lifeless white.

They had spent the whole afternoon walking. Only the sun, slowly sinking in front of them, told him they were heading westwards. He hadn't had time to search inside the lands yet: this part of the South Pole was completely foreign to him. Out of habit, he found himself examining the blue shadows along the dunes, looking for footprints, melted snow, some proof that a firebender had gone this way before him. After two entire weeks in this cold…

But there was nothing.

The young prince was vaguely aware of Kossa, besides him, who was praising the meat of walrus caribous and comparing it to caribou squirrels, but he wasn't even trying to pay attention. He hadn't been able to find the slightest proof of his crew's presence, nowhere, no matter how hard he searched… For the first time the thought gave him some strength; a bizarre hope.

The Avatar's childish voice kept echoing in his mind, not that impressive, not that solemn, but so _sure_:

"_Your crew_ _already found a way to leave the South Pole."_

Maps of the northern seas were passing through his mind, as though imprinted behind his eyes by three years of fruitless search. The outlines of the South Pole were clear in his memory, he could nearly see them on the immaculate snow before him. His heart was beating faster.

Of course that would have been difficult, even for trained men like his crew. And it didn't explain what had made them escape the ship in the first place. But maybe…

"There is a strait in the west…" he whispered.

"Hey, are you even listening? We aren't going all the way to the western coast, what's up with the strait?"

"But there _is _one, right? It separates the South Pole and the mountains, where the Southern Air Temple is. Only the Air Nomads don't own those mountains, nor the coasts. So it is neutral territory, and it can be used for trading…"

"…between the tribe and the Earth Kingdom, I know that," Sokka said, looking at him in puzzlement. "But it's been years since we used this strait, you know: all the tribesmen left to fight in the war, there's no one to protect trading ship. It's not like we have that much to sell now anyway. Why do you care?"

Zuko took a long breath, filling his lungs without even feeling the burn of the ice-cold air against his teeth and throat. The rope around his waist felt very tight all of a sudden.

"Even if all trading has stopped…there must still be something left of it, right? The sea walls must still be there, and you had to build some kind of warehouses to protect the merchandise. And if there are some boats left in there…"

The words were rushing out of his mouth, jostling each other and nearly blocking his throat. He had to stop before his voice started shaking.

The Water tribesman had gone serious beside him. He kept silent for some time, as though seizing up the foreigner: the pale hands clenched on the red coat, the thick wisps of steam coming out of his nostrils like blood underwater, the golden eyes staring fiercely at the livid polar sun.

"That's what you are thinking? That your crew found those warehouses and boats near the western strait, and that they used them to reach the Earth Kingdom?"

"My men are no amateurs," Zuko replied. His voice was hoarse yet firm, sharp. "They must know about this strait. And once in the Earth Kingdom, they can reach the nearest annexed port and get help."

He breathed out a puff of steam.

"Perhaps…perhaps they _really _managed to leave."

A thrill went through him as he uttered those words, defiance or dread, as though he had now officially made a gamble with fate. But Kossa just frowned.

"I guess," he said slowly, "there could be some installations and goods left from the trading. Not that much if you ask me, but whatever. But boats? We kind of _need _those to leave the South pole, see? At the very best you could find some sailing boats that needed to be repaired in the warehouses. Wouldn't be enough to move a whole crew. Sorry, but your theory doesn't sound that credible."

Zuko tried to shrug at his words, but his fists were too tightly clenched by his sides, making his gesture oddly stiff, almost a jerk.

"I don't recall asking for your opinion, peasant" he managed to pronounce. "You can keep thinking I'm crazy for all I care; it's not like you've done anything but since I came here."

"Hey! I'm criticising your _theory_, not you, you idiot! Don't get everything mixed up, it's bad for my argumentation!"

That was surprisingly true. But Zuko wasn't in the mood to discuss rhetoric. He tried walking faster, willing for the conversation to end, but when he breathed out words spilled from his lips on their own accord, half drowned in steam:

"My men were not turned into rust. I refuse to believe that."

He heard Kossa swallow hard next to him.

"Look, that's not what I…"

"Shut up! Can't you see I don't care what you think? Can't you see I need a lead? I don't have the time to be sceptical. Maybe my uncle needs me right now, and I'm still responsible for my crew, so as long as you can't show me their _corpses _I have no right to just give up and think some spirits…"

"I never _said _they were turned into rust, damn it!"

That surprised Zuko enough that he fell silent. For a few moments there was nothing to be heard but the crunching of their steps on the packed snow and the sound of the sleigh trailing behind them. Kossa had crossed his arms over his chest, looking rather offended.

"I agree with you on one thing," he said. "It won't do you much good to drive yourself mad and see spirits everywhere. Some weird stuff might have happened to you, but that doesn't mean science's suddenly fit for the bin. I mean, no offence, but you benders really have the tendency to turn mystic the first opportunity you get."

The peasant paused briefly to get his breath back, then went on:

"Your theory from before is fishy at best, but at least it's rational. It's just your method that makes no sense. You need facts to back you up, man. Let's see, this…rust, thing. You did say it could attack people, but you were feverish at the time, weren't you? Has anyone actually been touched?"

Zuko turned towards him, wide-eyed. He even forgot to get annoyed at this peasant who, having lived all his life in some backward wasteland, still took the liberty to give him lessons on logic.

"I don't think so…" he said slowly. "There were still some animals in my ship, before it collapsed. Twelve war mounts. Everything else was covered in rust, the tapestries, even some of the food, but theyhadn't been touched."

The young prince's face darkened at those words, a phantom pain briefly grasping his shoulder where Orm's large head had fallen. He hadn't told anyone about the methodical slaughter of his komodo rhinos, back in this dismal room, back in the piercing cold that had paralysed the weakest of them… But Kossa merely nodded with a satisfied expression, and didn't ask for details.

"So that's already one argument _against _carnivorous rust. See? There's nothing more to it."

This time Zuko couldn't find any words to answer.

They remained silent for most of the journey afterwards. The two teenagers needed all their concentration to fight off the cold that was getting more and more biting as night fell. The leather rope was rubbing painfully against Zuko's waist. He couldn't tell for how long they had been walking: the pole's unchanging landscape seemed to have swallowed them for good. When Kossa finally came to a halt, there still wasn't anything to be seen around them but the ghostly outlines of glaciers, standing out against the black sky in the distance.

"And here we are!"

Here? There was triumph in the peasant's voice. Still, aside from the abnormally high hills standing in front of them and blocking their view, the place seemed just as desolate as the rest of the South Pole. Zuko's lip curled disapprovingly.

Meanwhile Kossa seemed to have become overly energetic once again. He quickly untied the rope around his waist, and without warning he grabbed the prince's hand and dragged him to an abrupt slope. It was a good six yards high. They had to climb nearly on all fours on the packed snow that burnt his fingers like an acid; the wind chafed his neck and ears. Kossa must be used to do the stupid exercise; he was way ahead of him already, it was infuriating.

He felt like throwing fireballs, but finally they reached the top of the hill. The landscape stood out sharply in the pale glare of the moon. For a second he forgot the bite of cold.

"Our trap for walrus caribous!" Kossa announced, embracing the horizon with a wide motion of his spear. "Has been there for centuries, and still holding pretty well, don't ya think?"

The hill on which the two teenagers were standing was not natural. In fact it wasn't a hill at all. Silently, Zuko gazed at the pearl-white wall that sliced through the plain, as far as the eye could see.

The side they had just climbed had been rendered almost shapeless by the wind, but the inner wall was still as smooth as marble. Screwing up his eyes, he was able to see a similar construction at the other end of the plain. Both walls seemed to converge towards some point in the distance, where they formed a narrow corridor, barely wide enough to walk three abreast.

"There's as good as nothing left of the Southern Water Tribe," Kossa went on, "but this, no one thought to destroy it. This is ours."

"Those walls were made by waterbenders," Zuko said quietly.

At once the peasant was angry again:

"Not _just _waterbenders!" he protested. "All the men participate for that kind of work. And you also need architects, and it was the hunters who imagined the trap in the first place, you think those were all benders? Really, you people, always thinking the world turns round your navel…"

Kossa climbed back down, grumbling about finding some shelter to wait for the walrus caribous without turning into snowmen. Zuko followed him with some irritation, shrugging stiffly at the peasant's mood swings.

They dragged the sleigh to a shallow cave half buried in snow. Kossa still wasn't done sulking: the two teenagers vigorously yelled at each other as they cleared the snow away from the entrance, unloaded the sleigh then hauled it against the opening of the cave to cut off the wind.

"Why the hell", the young prince found himself snapping, "do you stupid peasant have to drag me into _all _of your ridiculous projects? I already gave you the supplies from my ship, we went after those damned fish, now this! Aren't you supposed to make your _own _supplies before winter?"

"Hey! I'm the village's hunter. It's my job to get as much meat as I can so my village won't _starve_, you jerkbender. But I guess it's no wonder a prince, or whatever it is you are, can't get something like that."

Zuko clenched his fists, about to retort. What did this backward foreigner know about him, in Agni's name, of course he had experienced hunger after three years banished at sea: the lack of drinking water, the biscuits crawling with rat-worms larva when they would wander for too long, sometimes months without landing…

But even as he opened his mouth, Zuko realized that he himself couldn't imagine the level of distress this village might suffer at times, stranded as it was in a frozen, utterly barren land. He lowered his head, bad-temperedly.

"Also, I'm not that dense," Kossa went on, seemingly not noticing the prince's change in behaviour. He was arranging some kind of camp fire on the ground, crushing a shrivelled bush on top of a dry, brown material that looked dangerously like it had come out of the bison's intestines. "With this kid talking Katara into finding a waterbending master at the other end of the world, and Katara going wild about Avatars' quests and stopping the war… I think I have a pretty good idea of how that's gonna turn out."

Zuko glanced at him, surreptitiously. The peasant had come to sit cross-legged near the entrance, his spear stuck in the ground. It should help him sense the approach of the herd through the vibrations, or so he said. His gloved hand seemed to grip the weapon tighter than was strictly necessary.

"Well, we haven't talked about any of that yet," Kossa concluded. "But I'd rather be sure the tribe has as much supply as possible. Just in case."

The young prince nodded, a little awkwardly, and lighted up the tiny branches with a gesture of his hand.

"The Avatar told me this morning he was going to leave the village eventually," he said. "If that's what you were wondering. But he didn't say anything about bringing you or your sister along."

Kossa nodded, unsurprised. He was quiet for a while, looking intently at the fire, as though lost in thoughts.

"Say, why do we even build a fire if you can make one yourself?" he suddenly asked. "Now that would make your magic flames useful, and it would save us some fuel!"

"Only they are not _magic flames_, that's my point," Zuko hissed, starting at the barbaric words. "Do you really think it's that simple? That the fire comes out of nowhere? Without fuel it is my strengths that keep it alive. I'm not going to exhaust myself for hours on end just so you can spare some bush!"

"Whoa, I was just asking! No need to get so worked up."

"You're the one getting worked up."

"Er, no, that would be you."

"No, you."

The peasant threw him a weird look. For a moment it even seemed as though he was going to laugh out loud. Zuko glared, just in case.

Silence fell between them once again, only disturbed by the crackling of the campfire, its flames pouring orange shadows onto the stone walls, and by the wind howling outside. It was almost warm in there. Zuko wrapped himself in his winter cloak, breathing out a puff of steam. His mind started wandering, spreading out both maps and memories in front of his eyes, southern Earth Kingdom ports they had moored at before, and he found himself imagining his men there. Wide-eyed and exhausted, but safe.

Guon's port, for instance, was tiny and poorly equipped, but it was the closest to the South pole. Could it be that his crew had managed to reach it? He would have to start his search there. Lost in thoughts, Zuko fingered thin white-hot twigs, watching them glow and crumble in his palm as their warmth impregnated his skin to the shoulder. He was frowning. If he could just find some kind of boat near this strait in the west… Even a kayak would do. At worst, he would learn to use those shapeless things the Water Tribe peasants sailed in…

Kossa yawned loudly, rousing the prince from his musings.

"Still, your fire, the more I think 'bout it, the less handy it looks," he said with a smirk. "There's all those rules to produce it, it eats up your strength, and it can't even help to build a city or a wall. And you live on an island, but your boats and navigation skills suck. I'd say you Fire Nation people are kinda useless."

It wasn't hard to hear the hint of teasing in the hunter's voice. However, it didn't stop Zuko from retorting hotly, claiming he wouldn't exchange his firebending for all the world, let alone for any of the other elements, all of them inhuman, lifeless and _cold_; he was fine without having this insane land's ice and salt-saturated water running down his veins, thank you very much.

And Fire citizen _were_ outstanding sailors, he went on without pausing for breath: not only did they have the greatest fleet in the world, but even back when they still used sailing boats their navigation skills had had nothing to envy those of the poles' tribes.

Seeing that the other boy looked ready to snicker once again, he told him about an old ritual his uncle had once described to him. Something all true firebenders would be challenged to do at that time, sailing one entire night in a boat too small to sit in, guided by nothing but the patterns of the stars and the direction of the wind entering their lungs. They would sail alone, one-handed, the other palm stretched out and ablaze, lighting the way and challenging the ocean until the breaking dawn.

He himself had never tried it, though: ever since the slaughter of the Air Nomads, it wasn't too well thought of to rely on the wind to travel. The use of sails had been mostly abandoned, too: it had been decades since they had invented steam boats after all…

He had grown a bit quieter with the last sentences, but Kossa failed to notice, cutting him short to tell him about a similar rite of passage from his tribe, his eyes bright with excitement. The details of the test were secret, he said importantly, part of what made his tribe unrivalled. Of course the whole thing was by far more dangerous than this little picnic trip the firebender praised so naively.

He also talked about the Southern Water Tribe's city, before the war, the great walls and ice towers. Their use of hydraulic energy had been so state of the art that scientists from all over the world would come to them and learn from the technology of the poles. Now nothing the Fire Nation could cobble up compared to _that_, he happily concluded, but Zuko was already interrupting him to prove him otherwise.

The patriotic duel went on for some time, two exalted teenagers racking their brains to render all the richness of their homelands, their heroes and discoveries, their art and skills. The nations they were building in their shelter of rock and snow were beautiful and proud, but behind their enthusiasm both were silently, fully aware that those same nations had died a century ago:

There was nothing left of the Southern Water Tribe but a shapeless village lost among the ice. And the Fire Nation itself had lost of its radiance, tarnished by the coals of war technology, palling through the uniformity of propaganda, weakened by the loss of their youth, sent out at war again and again.

When the teenagers noticed all of their sentences began with "before the war", they had no choice but to be quiet. They stared at each other across the campfire; with bright astonished eyes, not daring to say another word lest they would have to agree with the other.

_We were greater before the war._

Kossa's hand suddenly tensed around his spear; his eyes darted round the cave for a second. He extricated his head from his fur-trimmed hood and pressed his ear against the handle, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

"They're coming," he said at last with a nod; his tone was surprisingly calm. "Can you put out the fire?"

"What do you _think_?" Zuko said in a huff, already pressing his palms against the embers to smother the flames.

The peasant watched him with a slight grimace, but didn't comment on his behaviour. He took his time picking the coals among the warm ashes, packing them carefully and putting them in a bag before getting his weapons. Zuko found his lack of hast unexpected and rather unnerving, after the state of near-hysteria the foreigner had shown most of the day.

However, when Kossa dragged him once again into the frozen night and they climbed the wall of ice, he had to admit that the goal of their hunt, thick brown beasts huddled together, wasn't exactly about to escape from them.

In fact those things were hardly moving.

"What, _that_'s a walrus caribou?" the prince exclaimed in frustration, pointing at the nearly legless animals crawling on the ground. "You said those things had to be hunted with ten people at least!"

"Will you pipe down?" the peasant said between his teeth. "Want some action? Wait 'til we make them run."

Kossa had kneeled in the snow next to him, following the beasts' slow progression with covetous eyes. He muttered some calculations, evaluating the distance between the animals and the trap, then cast another look around as though to check that all his weapons were in their proper place, the boomerang on his back, the spear in his hand.

"Are you sure you can do it just with your fire?" he went on without lifting his eyes. "I saw you brought back some kind of swords the other day, was it just for show?"

"Dual Dao swords," Zuko corrected in irritation. "They would weigh me down in the snow. You were the one who said we would have to be fast."

"I can see your point: you're bad enough at walking in the snow as it is. Let's go get some meat, then! Do you remember the plan?"

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

The peasant gave him a pointed look; Zuko was briefly tempted to switch the objective of his hunt. However Kossa was already standing up and running down the slope, towards the narrow corridor at the end of the trap. "Count to fifty before you go. If I'm not ready it'll mess up the whole plan!" he said excitedly over his shoulder, and slid down into the dark.

Zuko was suddenly alone on top of the ancient wall, hearing nothing but the distant howling of the wind roaming the hills, the hoarse calls of the walrus caribous below him, and his own heartbeats, hammering against his ribcage with a strange intensity, as though this half mad pole boy had somehow communicated some of his enthusiasm to him before leaving.

Zuko shook his head and started counting, pacing around in the snow to make his blood circulate in his legs despite the cold. From the corner of his eye he watched the herd of huge creatures as they moved forward with an agonizing slowness.

Their skin was dark, hairless, and seemed more elastic than the komodo rhino's cuirass. He couldn't make out their legs very well in the distance: it looked like four giant flippers, on which the beasts laboriously propelled themselves. All things considered, the only impressive part of these creatures was the head: two broad, yellowish tusks jutted out of their jaws. Some of them wore thick, entangled antlers, framing their foreheads like a fossilized crown. From afar it felt like seeing an absurd mountain of bone sitting enthroned on a heap of flesh.

The young prince wasn't sure he wanted to eat one of those things.

Forty-nine. Fifty.

Zuko rubbed his hands, satisfied by the sight of sparks cracking between his palms. The wind coiling up round his legs and arms exhaled frozen dust in his face, stinging his eyes. The ice fragments melted with a low hiss as they touched his skin.

He looked around, but he couldn't see his hunt mate from where he was. He breathed in, as deeply as he could, then flexed his knees and planted his heels in the snow, starting the longest firebending set he knew. Flames tore from his outstretched arms, free and raging: they cut through the night in one thick orange stream and dispersed behind the creatures with a roar.

There was a hoarse, surprised cry: he must have hit one of the walrus caribous. In the wild light that had taken over the plain, he thought he could see his fire reflected in the animals' black eyes as they twisted around in stupefaction.

And suddenly, they fled.

Captivated, Zuko almost missed the crucial moment where he must start running towards the end of the trap and keep throwing fire at their preys to guide their flight. Head bent, exposing their antlers like the bone helmet of a battering ram, the walrus caribous had propelled themselves forward, and hurtled on the packed snow with a horrible rumbling. The ground was shaking under his feet as Zuko chased after the beasts, sending out ephemeral flames that got weaker and weaker as his heartbeats quickened.

They were running in the right direction, though, the prince thought, smiling against the frost. In his excitement the success of this hunt, theoretically the least of his troubles, was taking the form of a true victory.

The snow was hard against the sole of his boots. Zuko was running as fast as he could, but still the creatures were distancing him, howling as they tried to escape the bursts of flames. Sometimes they would hit the snow wall and nearly throw the teenager to the ground. Soon the walrus caribous would reach the corridor, where Kossa was lying in ambush, and they would have to slow down. If this peasant was as good a hunter as he claimed, he would hit one of them. Then…

Just as he formulated that thought, another bellow distorted by the polar wind reached his ears, as well as a victorious cry. Zuko sped up, breathing steam out of his mouth and nostrils. The ground shook with the shocks from the monsters as they pressed against the walls of the trap and tried to escape towards the ocean, one after the other.

When Zuko reached the far end of the wall, the walrus caribous were already disappearing in the distance. Only one of them had stayed behind and was crawling along the opposite wall, a spear planted in its lower spine. Blood was trickling from the wound.

Lowering his eyes, Zuko saw the other hunter crouching in the snow, his back on him. He was gripping his boomerang and followed the wounded prey with his eyes, too focused to notice the firebender standing above him.

Zuko didn't move at first, short of breath after his run and his multiple attacks. One arm pressed around his side, still grinning slightly without taking notice, the young prince focused on the walrus caribou's moves as well. Kossa seemed to have the situation under control, but the animal might still have the energy to try and escape…

Not one to leave anything to chance, Zuko breathed in as deeply as he could, fuelling the forge in his lungs.

There was a scent of burned flesh in the air.

His eyes widened.

"Kossa, watch out!"

The peasant had barely the time to look up and see the firebender jumping on him before Zuko threw them both into a snowdrift, raising in a mad rush a wall of fire between them and the opening of the trap.

There was a loud howl, and then two giant tusks, surmounted by a helmet of bone, broke through the furnace not two feet away from the two teenagers.

This must be the walrus caribou he had hit as he tried to scare the herd away,Zuko guessed in a haze. His senses were clouded, disturbed by cold and heat, the animal breath mixed with the stench of burning fat. A brown flipper, large enough to crush their spine, twisted in front of his face; with a yell he raised his arms in front of him, hands ablaze to strengthen the wall. The roar of fire mingled with the monster's screams. The snow around him was melting against his clothes, its cold nearly sucked up his breath and smothered his bending, but finally the walrus caribou turned away, blind with pain. He tried to propel himself on his charred flipper, perhaps on half a dozen yards before he collapsed on the snow, whole body fuming, and died.

It took the prince quite some time to breathe normally again, and a little more to notice that he was still sprawled on the Water Tribe boy after his fall. He slowly extricated himself from the snowdrift, limbs still shaking. Half buried in the snow, the other teenager remained motionless, pale eyes wide as he watched the smoke rise from the dead beast.

Finally his gaze fell on the prince.

"Sokka!" he yelled. "SO-KKA! That's two syllables, damn it! Do you Fire jerks make it a custom to freaking cauterize your brain? What the hell, you've been hanging around in myvillage for more than two weeks, and guess how everyone's calling me all the time? Sokka! Seriously, that can't be harder than remembering weird names like Zuko!"

The hunter stood up with some difficulty on the melted snow, still cursing.

"You should go make sure the meat mountain's well and truly dead," he muttered, wringing out his ponytail. "I'll go finish the other one before he tries going back to his friends and takes my spear along. And for the record, the name's Sokka."

Making sure the mad beast with its giant tusks had been definitely rendered harmless was a pretty good idea as far as Zuko was concerned, so at first he didn't protest. Actually, it was only after he had walked to the walrus caribou and circled it with caution, his nose slightly wrinkled against the smell, that the prince realized he had, just a moment before, as good as saved Sokka's life, and that instead of thanking him the xenophobic moron had found nothing better to do than insult him on some stupid ground.

The prince gritted his teeth, irked at not having reacted fast enough to the offence, and determined to make up for it as soon as the idiot would face him again. However, when he heard footsteps behind his back and turned around with dangerous stiffness, he saw that Sokka was now grinning from ear to ear.

"Two walrus caribous, can you believe it? Told ya my plan was brilliant! Two of them! It'll be a real pain to bring all of this back to the village, but damn, that's so worth it!"

That guy was completely crazy, Zuko thought, perhaps for the sixth time this day. Anger forgotten, he took a step back in case the lunatic would do something weird like hug him or burst out laughing without warning.

But Sokka merely grinned wider and started circling their prey with exhilaration, poking the charred flesh with his spear. "Still, you made a real mess out of yours. We'll have to stand the smell when we come back. But hey, as long as it's still edible…" Finally he turned round and went to fetch the sleigh with a spring in his steps.

The two teenagers had to combine their strength to haul the two creatures on the planks. Their still lukewarm body weighed enough to almost dislocate their knees. For a second, that thought filled Zuko with a vague, incomprehensible pride.

"We've been lucky, don't you think?" Sokka said as he jumped on the walrus caribous' flabby chests to tie them to the sleigh. "A whole herd coming out of the water in winter! They only come on land to mate usually."

"If you say so," the young prince said, shrugging. "I'm not lucky most of the time."

The teenager laughed from his perch.

"Good thing I'm here too, then."

Their task achieved, the two hunters rested for a while, eating most of the food they had left before setting off again. They had to pull on the ropes with all their might for a good minute before the sleigh even began to move: its sudden weight seemed to have embedded it in the ground. At first it barely made a few inches forward, screeching plaintively, before its own weight started dragging it along, making their work easier.

In between groans of exertion, the peasant still managed to chatter, looking for paths that would skirt round the hills, muttering about the flying bison they could have used to do the job, but Aang was too disgusted by the idea of hunting to permit that, disgusted by _hunting_, can you believe it? This kid doesn't even eat meat!

The hunter's scandalized voice was a little muffled by the furs covering his mouth and by the whistling of the wind around them. Fragments of frost danced in the dark and whipped their faces. Zuko pulled his hood down to cover his ears and held his cloak tighter around his shoulders.

The red velvet of the Fire Nation wasn't nearly as good a protection as a parka would have been: over and over again he had to call on his inner fire to rekindle the heat in his blood, wrapping himself in a thick enough steam to cut off the polar wind.

It had always been enough, though. Even after a whole day of walking and a night of hunting, even with each of his breaths burning and swelling his lungs, even as his fire felt like an animal biting his joints, it felt oddly gratifying to go unprotected over this fiercely cold land. His bare hands steamed as he pulled on the rope alongside Sokka. The wind couldn't graze his skin; it ran angrily over his fingers, powerless in spite of the ice needles it scraped off the hills. Its low-pitched whistle echoed around them, in the opaque whiteness of the night.

Zuko wasn't afraid. So when he first noticed a brief movement from the corner of his eye, something slithering downhill and vanishing again, he thought it nothing but another wisp of snow.


	12. Back where the way collapses 3

_**To Honour the moment**_

Dear RL,

It is with great desperation that I'm applying for the position of part-time fanfiction writer on the Internet. I'm convinced that my growing disgust for anything career-related makes me an ideal candidate for this type of activity.

The last semester has brought me valuable experience in a variety of interesting, serious and useful fields. However it left me with the rather traumatic impression that I had written nothing but cover letters for months. I'm positive that focusing on a useless task will greatly benefit my mental health.

My aim is to make it up to the readers who have been encouraging me, and whom I couldn't even find the motivation to answer to.

Thank you for your consideration. If you require any further information please do not hesitate to leave me the hell alone, at least for the duration of the summer.

Helplessly yours,

Stingmon

* * *

Well, that was less fun that it sounded in my head. Um. I'm not dead yet? Just a little tired after the semester, and trying to find my motivation again. Thank you to all those who keep hanging around!

Lunatique helped me correct the second part of "Back where the road collapses" that hadn't been beta-read. Thank you so much, Lunatique! I also tried to re-write the prolog and the third part of "For to dust you shall return", in which it has been proven that I fail at portraying Katara. I hope this improves things a bit.

(Not that it has anything to do with, well, anything, but I haven't started "Legend of Korra" yet, so no spoiler please )

In any case, here is the last part of the first book, "The Cold". Hope you have a good reading!

* * *

Chapter 5: _Back where the way collapses (3/3)_

_("We've been lucky, don't you think?" Sokka said, jumping on the walrus caribous' flabby chests to tie them to the sleigh. "A whole herd coming out of the water in winter! They only come on land to mate usually."_

"_If you say so," the young prince said, shrugging. "I'm not lucky most of the time."_

_The teenager laughed from his perch._

"_Good thing I'm here as well, then.")_

_Zuko wasn't afraid. So when he first noticed a brief movement out of the corner of his eye, something slithering downhill and vanishing again, he thought it nothing but another wisp of snow._

Clouds had covered the moon; he couldn't see a yard ahead. There was nothing left of the fantastic landscape of the pole but an imprecise graveyard of blue shadows.

Yet another fleeting movement in the dark, closer to the sleigh. This time Zuko distinctly heard heavy flapping, not unlike the sound of great wings. He lifted his head and searched the shadows between the hills, then the sky obstructed with black clouds.

"Don't mind them. A bunch of owl wolves hanging around, is all," he heard Sokka say next to him. "They were probably attracted by the smell."

The peasant had stopped to flatten an expanse of snow with his spear. He resumed pulling the sleigh with a groan, without so much as a glance around. Still, the air was getting filled with the sound of flapping wings. Every time the layer of clouds thinned, Zuko could glimpse white feathers catching the moonlight. Large claws would clench for a second and disappear.

Listening closely, Zuko thought he could hear the snapping of teeth.

The young prince let go of the rope to raise his palm towards the hills and the lurking shadows. Sparks ran along his fingers like small insects of gold, a silent threat.

"Owl wolves," he repeated, tasting the strange name with wariness. "Are you telling me those things are harmless?"

There was a brief hooting. Zuko looked up in time to see a scraggy form fly past them, close enough that he felt the cold air move against his face.

The animal was about the size of a twelve year old child. It flew as though hunched on itself, its white fur taut on thin, hard muscles. It flew away too fast for him to see its face, but once again the prince made out the sound of teeth snapping in the air.

Sokka threw a disinterested look around and shook his head.

"They're scavengers," he explained as he resumed walking. "They feed off walrus caribous corpses. You just ignore them until they get that those two are ours. They never attack men."

Zuko didn't lower his hand.

"You also said walrus caribous never came out of the water before spring…"

The hunter turned towards him. The look in his eyes was hard to decipher in the dark. He too stopped pulling on the rope: the sleigh came to a halt. Suddenly there was nothing to be heard but the polar wind and the scavengers' calls, the large and unpleasant beasts that flew in circles around them like clawed children.

They kept very close to the ground.

"You think they might act weird as well?" Sokka asked, raising his brows. "Use your flames, if you'd rather be careful. It'll be more than enough to scare them away."

Sokka still wasn't paying any attention to the animals around them, as unimpressed as if they were but a swarm of mosquitoes. There was no hint of derision in his advice, though. He hadn't even said "magic flames".

Thus Zuko nodded; a wisp of steam came out of his nostrils as he drew his fist against his side. "Give me a moment," he said, and punched the air. His fire stretched out in an arc above the sleigh, casting orange shadows over the hills. The owl wolves appeared, invading the sky like grotesque monsters from a theatre set, broad white wings standing out in the darkness, clawed paws, shaggy muzzles and yellowish teeth, enormous black, fixed eyes.

A moment passed, and the pack swooped down on them.

Talons grazed his head; Zuko threw himself to the ground and nearly got tangled up in the rope that tied him to the sleigh. Cursing through his teeth, he burned the rope and threw another burst of flames towards the sky. A wing caught fire; a silhouette flew away, jerkily. The young prince was able to stand up again, open palms ablaze, and stare at the assailants in challenge.

He heard a high shriek from his left. Another owl wolf fell, and the curved weapon Sokka called a boomerang came back whistling in his hand. The tribesman had taken his spear and was whirling it around furiously to keep the horde of monsters at bay. When he turned his head towards him, Zuko noticed in the light of his flames that one of the scavengers had made two parallel cuts on his temple.

"You won, damn it!" Sokka yelled, all trace of relaxation wiped from his face. "That's it, Zuko, you're a jinx! At least that's settled!"

The firebender tried to retort, but a white shadow was already aiming for his throat. Flames rose to shield him; they froze the beast in mid-air, and Zuko could only stare at its fixed eyes and wide open jaws filled with sparks, before the burned corpse was sent rolling to the ground.

Incandescent feathers were flying over the battlefield. Their short-lived glow seemed to distort the scavengers' forms. It spread large shadows of teeth, claws and wings on the ground, like shapeless illusions dancing around them, black against the reddish snow. Sometimes Zuko couldn't tell them from the true assailants.

The prince jumped to the side, kicking an owl wolf that had managed to sneak on him. His back collided with the flabby flank of the walrus caribous; he bit back a grimace and used the leverage to raise both arms at the ready. In the reddish darkness he could hear Sokka's halting protests: "Damn you, you're supposed to _go away_, are you stupid?" Everything else was drowned among the beasts' high shrieks and the blood pulsing through his temples.

He was cold, in spite of the fire spreading along his arteries and pouring out of his feet and hands, a sickly cold that gnawed at his chest. Perhaps the snow in which he had fallen a moment before was to blame: some of it had stuck to the collar of his coat and was slowly melting against his neck, dripping down his back like cold sweat.

His throat hurt. The slight suffocating feeling was almost familiar: a vague, nauseous dizziness that slowed down his moves…

Between each of his attacks the young prince would search the sky, watching the winged monsters' every move with strange fascination. He didn't quite know what disgusted him so much about those things. The eyes, maybe, way too black and wide, that stared at him with surreal fixity.

Or maybe it were those shrieks, unbearably shrill _(so different from their usual hooting, could it be normal?)_, the screeches that filled the night like metal scratching metal, in which he thought he could hear the echoes of laughter.

Of laughter…

Zuko froze. Cold seeped into his lungs. He couldn't tell how he was able to light a brighter flame in his hands, to lift his head despite the frost paralysing his spine, and _look._

The owl wolf was hovering above his head. Its body was tense, wings beating mightily to keep itself in the air. Its wide eyes fixed him without blinking; its chops were curling up in a snarl to reveal yellowish fangs, glistening with saliva.

On its white shoulder there was a black thing, creeping like a reptile, eyeing him ironically.

The owl wolf stood still, ready to strike. The creature crouching in its fur stretched out its sinuous body and opened an indistinct mouth, _rust_, there was rust, its jaws were filled with it, Zuko wanted to scream but the cold had sucked up his breath; a lone strangle cry escaped his throat as he threw a jet of flames at the nightmarish spirit. Fire licked the scavenger's neck. Fur filled his field of vision, tore him from the sleigh's support and threw him to the ground.

He couldn't see a thing. The snow was everywhere, paralysing him. Something was digging into his shoulder, the pain, the animal's stinky breath, the cold, white death, numbing fear. Suddenly the weight pinning him to the ground shook, let out a short cry, and the scavenger collapsed on his chest.

Silence. At first all the firebender was aware of was his own fear, a large droning that engulfed him like a wave and made his limbs shiver uncontrollably. His hand blindly searched the beast's fur, his fingers getting stuck in the tangles. At last his fist closed around a handful of warm ashes.

It felt greasy, and abnormally light.

He thought he heard a voice calling his name, but it was very far away, and he still couldn't see a thing through the fog that had invaded his wide-open eyes. He didn't react when two hands grabbed the owl wolf's corpse, removing the claws that had sunk into his shoulder. The sensation of his own blood running against his skin and impregnating his clothes made him feel warmer for a second. He blinked several times, and finally recognized the brown face leaning over him.

From the look of it, Sokka was seriously considering slapping the foreign prince across the face.

"Zuko, can you hear me? Damn it, are you nuts, don't you just lie there bleeding out in the snow!"

Zuko nodded slowly, too stunned to react to the insult. At once Sokka pulled him back on his feet. He forced him to sit on the edge of the sleigh and grabbed his arm to examine the wound. The prince's gaze wandered a little and finally fell on the owl wolf's corpse lying on the ground, its claws bloody and its jaws foaming. A metallic bulge was fixed to its neck like a malformation: the handle of the boomerang that had broken its spine.

"He was two feet away, you moron!" Sokka yelled. "I thought you had him, how can anyone be dumb enough to miss a target when it's two feet away? You're lucky that wound doesn't look deep, what the hell do you want me to do with that, it's a _girls' _jobto take care of wounds! You can still hear me, right?"

Zuko nodded again, unable to get angry, feeling nothing but the cold and the suffocating bite of fear. He was still scanning the snow with his eyes, watching uncomprehendingly the hills and corpses.

The polar wind had already swept away the smell of his flames. Silence had settled again, a crushing weight.

"Where are the others?" he heard himself ask.

"They ran for it, what else?" Sokka said, releasing his arm to search through his bag." 'bout time, too. What were they thinking, attacking us like that? Animals are getting crazy these days. Still feeling your arm?"

Zuko responded by flexing and un-flexing his fingers, then his wrist and elbow, hardly feeling the pain that spread to his shoulders. His other fist was still tightly clenched around a handful of ashes. Slowly he forced his palm open, and a greasy dust fell to the ground with an imperceptible whisper.

When Zuko spoke again, his voice sounded very far-away to his own ears, strangely neutral:

"When did they run away? When I…missed that one?"

Sokka came back, holding a piece of cloth and what looked like a strap of crudely-tanned leather. His face looked darker than usual: it took the young prince a few seconds to realize that the scratch on his temple had left a broad streak of dry blood on his skin.

"Er, I guess so?" the hunter said, frowning at the dead animal at their feet. "I don't want to shoot you down, but I don't think you had much to do with it, what with your aim. They must have felt that the day was coming…"

"Here", he went on, shoving a handful of snow in his hands. "Clean the wound a little. This strap should keep it from bleeding too much and…I guess that'll do for now. Gran-Gran will fix you up better."

Zuko complied. However his eyes didn't leave the owl wolf and the burned fur on his shoulder, as though fearing something might creep out of the corpse. Even through the cloth the leather was rough against the wound, nearly cutting off his blood circulation. It gave him some protection against the bite of wind, though, that wet, cold wind seeping through the rip in his cloak and creeping up his skin bathed in sweat.

Sokka must have seen him shiver, for he searched another bag and pulled out a large square of fur.

"I took it from the igloo," he said as he handed it to the prince. "Sorry about the smell. Walk, okay? Don't let the blood loss cool you down."

Zuko nodded, holding the rudimentary coat tight around his shoulders. It did smell like seaweed tea, strangely mixing with its strong animal scent.

The sky was growing pale. The sun was rising, still invisible below the horizon. Little by little the shadow of its warmth accelerated the young prince's heartbeat and rid him of his lethargy. At last the shivering in his legs subsided enough for him to stand up. His face was fixed, almost calm. Sokka helped him tying himself to the sleigh and gave him another slice of dried meat. He chewed slowly, each mouthful sticking to his throat as he forced himself to swallow.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Sokka was watching the sleigh laden with two giant beasts indecisively.

"Shit," he said between clenched teeth. "Can you still drag this with your arm? Even I won't be able to carry two walrus caribous on my own. Still, we can't leave one behind! There's no way the stupid sleigh can just move on its own, is there?"

Zuko didn't even try to understand what the other boy might be ranting about and just shook his head to make him shut up. He winded the rope round his free arm and pulled with all his weight in silence, letting the whole world disappear, letting it reduce to nothing but the painful break of dawn and the burden he must drag across the desert of the pole.

Sokka hesitated for a few moments, eyeing him with what almost looked like concern before he shrugged and took his own rope to pull at the firebender's side.

They only reached the village late in the afternoon. During the whole journey Zuko didn't utter a word, drawing from the pale sun the energy for his legs to bear his weight. Sometimes the Water Tribe boy would stop him and make him eat and drink, but Zuko didn't want to drink. He felt as though water would cool him down, snuff him out, disperse the thin fog that separated him from the outside world. From time to time Sokka would ask him short questions about his shoulder or his strengths, and every time the prince answered with a vague nod.

He mustn't think. He methodically counted his steps in the packed snow, lost his count, started again. He mustn't think. He was aware of Agni's slow journey above their head, rising in the sky through the thick layer of clouds to decline again towards the West. A little snow was falling on them. He could feel the pain in his legs and shoulder, the rope biting into his arm and palm. Nothing else.

He didn't hear right away the enthusiastic calls of children hurrying to meet them, and he felt more than he saw the women circle them to drag the sleigh into the village. Somebody untied the rope around his waist. For a moment he was alone among the villagers, deaf and blind, letting the smelly fur slide down his shoulders as he pressed his hands against his knees and listened to the wheezing sound of his breath.

A small circle seemed to have formed around Sokka, who had dropped to a sitting position some distance away. Bits of sentences reached his ears, a feminine voice he thought he had heard before, saying something in a rush, about blood on the hunter's face, about an attack… Zuko straightened up to listen, but at once the girl from the pole was in his face, fists clenched in her gloves, tiny snowflakes dancing before her panic-widened eyes.

"You!" she said, raising her fists as though to beat at his chest. "Tell me, what happened to my brother? An owl-wolf did that, how could you be attacked by an owl-wolf, why didn't you _do _anything…"

The end of her sentence died on her lips. The fur had fallen, revealing the torn cloak and bloody clothes of the young man. The leather strap had moved as he walked; tiny beads of blood hung to the edge and fell drop by drop in the snow. But it wasn't the wound that had silenced her.

Still and as though bewitched, Zuko was staring back at her. He felt as if he could see himself in the girl's limpid eyes, his disfigured, livid face, his chapped lips, and more than anything his eyes, dilated and wild.

_I am scared…_

Katara was gripping his cloak, as though paralysed by fear, his own fear, this fear she was fixing in incomprehension, and suddenly Zuko was seized with the urge to take those gloved hands in his and _tell _her, in a whisper, or maybe in a scream:

_They left the ship._

"Katara," he heard Sokka say behind him, cutting his train of thoughts. "We've no idea what happened, okay? Those birds had clearly lost it. And we've been dragging the stupid sleigh for two days, Zuko's bushed. Give him some slack."

The peasant was still sitting in the snow, his head thrown back to face the covered sky, his voice a bit wheezing. That he would talk about Zuko's tiredness in his state should have annoyed Zuko, maybe, he wasn't sure anymore. He didn't say a word, even when the old woman who had healed him came to him, pried him out of Katara's grip and led him to the igloo. He didn't talk when the Avatar tried to approach him, a dozen childish questions on his lips.

His face was still expressionless, but behind his vacant stare something was slowly taking shape, frustration, a feeling of urgency and unfairness, the first sparks of anger.

Something that might, in time, allow him to fight.

The igloo, with the strong smell of furs and the bittersweet scent of the central fire, reminded him of long fevers. An orange half-light washed over him like a warm bath. He sank to his knees and didn't try to get up again. Soon Sokka was pushed into the igloo as well. The old woman told them to get out of their wet clothes, in a patient yet unyielding tone. The peasant complied with a half-hearted grumble, and Zuko himself was too exhausted to take offence at finding himself in the middle of an enemy village in his underwear. Yet again.

He remained entirely passive while the old woman tended to his wound, still lost in his thoughts. She spent some time looking for chilblains on his hands, feet and face before gesturing him to sit by the fire with a satisfied nod. Sokka did try to protest when his grandmother started cleaning the blood from his temple, but a huge yawn cut him short. In the end he let himself be examined, and as soon as the old woman covered him with a blanket he dropped off and started snoring.

A soft smile was playing about the woman's lips. She caressed the boy's head with her callous hand, quiet, as though nothing could reach them across those thin snow walls. Out of the corner of his eye Zuko watched her brush her grandson's hair, then carefully put it up into a ponytail.

The guiltiness hit him like a blow: the sensation of doing something wrong, of betraying someone, and he didn't know why. He slowly moved away from the others.

The old woman must have felt his discomfort, for she lifted her pale slanted eyes to his, and spoke calmly.

"You have seen something, haven't you."

It wasn't a question. Zuko lowered his head, achingly aware of how wide open his unburned eye was, how tense his brow and the rest of his face, as though the swarm of the owl wolves was still imprinted on his mind. He didn't answer. Couldn't. Not here, not now. He was almost naked, alone and vulnerable and _something_ was hunting him outside, how fast, how well…no, he couldn't answer.

The old woman didn't seem fazed by his silence. She straightened up, laboriously, and picked up the teenagers' clothes, furrowing her brows at the torn cloak of the prince. Then she left him alone to stare at the flames.

It was quiet: there was nothing to be heard but the fire's crackling and Sokka's snores, muffled by the blanket. The scent of furs hovered around him, a scent he had inhaled for days on end during his illness, mixed with his own sweat, so that it had ended up feeling familiar and almost comforting. Zuko wrapped himself up in a blanket and shivered, blowing steam out of his chapped nostrils.

_They left the ship._

The sentence was seeping into his mind like cold water, freezing all other thoughts. Everything else came in a jumble: the greasy dust he had held in his fist; the strange behaviour of the animals of the South Pole. There was still a little time before nightfall, those creatures came with darkness, would they come… The thin walls protecting the village; the creatures' sardonic eyes. Was it their presence that had disturbed the animals, frightened them out of their habits?

Or could those spirits control them, and they had used the owl wolves' sense of smell to find him?

Find him. _So it's really me they're after…_

Zuko closed his eyes, tightly. _They left the ship. _His ears were buzzing; it hurt to think. The urgency was there, as well, a hysterical urge to move immediately drowned by exhaustion. _They will find me._ Unfairness, anger, a small ember that might rise up and fight, later on. _I'm scared._

In Agni's name, why was he _scared_? Why was he shocked? Had he somehow convinced himself that those things had disappeared along with the rest of his ship? That they couldn't exist outside the rusted corridors, that surely they would vanish if they ventured outside, like the vague shadows of a nightmare?

That they weren't real.

That they were weak. Too weak to have been able to kill his uncle…

_They __**are**__, _Zuko thought with all his might. He was absent-mindedly rubbing the tip of his fingers, where rust had encrusted under his nails and irritated his skin. _It took them a whole week to find me; they are weak and they are slow. They couldn't touch me. I even burned one of them._

_I can do it again._

That last thought soothed him somewhat. When he lied down, as close to the flames as he could, he was even able to doze off, a restless sleep broken with memories and nightmares. He dreamed of hunting in the snow, along metal corridors; he dreamed of chases where he couldn't tell the prey from the predator. As he ran he remained aware of Sokka's snoring besides him and of the fire's warmth on his face. He tried to wait for nightfall, to follow the slow setting of the sun with his mind, the wave of darkness and cold that would soon swallow the little snow fortifications.

In the end he didn't know what belonged to the dream or to the outside world. He felt the sun set five times over. Owl wolves covered in rust danced in the flames and laughed shrilly, but he was too tired to be afraid. He dreamed that he was sleeping, curled up in the centre of the igloo, and Katara, the waterbending girl, was sitting by his side, hugging her knees. Her dark face was almost buried in the collar of her parka, hiding the round cheeks, the snub nose. Her eyes didn't leave the exit, as though keeping watch. It was a comforting thought; she _knew_ (what did she know? In his dream he was convinced he had talked to her), she knew, he wasn't alone…

And the next second he was shaken by the shoulders. The cloth of dream ripped and Sokka appeared in his field of vision with a grin on his face, the cut already healed on his temple.

"Zuko, oi, you hearing me? Are you feeling better?"

The prince sat up and nodded, disoriented. He had slept with his valid arm trapped under his body, and his fingers felt a little numb. He moved them absent-mindedly. His blood circulation felt unpleasantly slow.

"…What time is it?" he asked.

"Night!" Sokka said brightly, without seeming to notice the crispation of the prince's hands. "The women have finished cutting up the first walrus caribou, and now we have fresh meat man, it's a party! Gran-Gran says you should sleep some more, but you're not gonna miss it, right?"

Zuko was still in a state of hazy wonderment that nightmarish monsters had yet to jump at his throat, and didn't quite process the chatter. He instinctively frowned at the word "party", thrown back for a moment to the nightly frivolities his uncle had had the embarrassing urge to organize on his ship.

But his ship had collapsed now. And his uncle, his crew…

He threw back his blanket and shook his head vehemently. Escaped, they must have escaped. Somewhere out of the pole. Guon's port, perhaps. If he could just go there and find clues…

Above him, the tribesman slapped him happily on the shoulder and shoved a pile of clothes into his hands.

"I knew it! We're men, it takes more than a little hunt to get to us. But try explaining that to your grandmother. We're waiting for you outside, okay?"

Before Zuko could realize the misunderstanding and try to protest, Sokka had already left. All the prince could do was stare accusingly at the igloo's entrance. Then his attention was drawn to the pile of clothes, suspiciously heavy and _blue _in his hands.

They had taken the trouble to get him the clothes he had brought back from his ship, but the too big parka that went along with the rest was most definitely Water Tribe. Zuko ran his fingers along the thick furs that trimmed the collar, frustrated and confused.

And like the damn fur coat wasn't enough, Sokka had just been talking to him like they were _comrades_, or something. Now that he thought about it, Zuko himself had at some point gotten used to calling him by his name, as though suddenly this Water Tribe person had become something more than an anonymous, backwards peasant lost in a wasteland. As though his not being Fire Nation or even a _bender_ didn't make him inferior.

And he and the other villagers were waiting for him. To throw a _party_.

In Agni's name, just when had the world gotten so weird?

Zuko slipped on his clothes and, after a long hesitation, the foreign coloured parka. It fell almost to his knees, and only the tip of his fingers stuck out from the sleeves: the parka had obviously belonged to a much older man. Zuko must look like a fool with that thing.

It didkeep him warm, though.

He could hear laughter from outside. He didn't feel so tired anymore. And it probably wouldn't do him much good to keep hiding in here. Zuko put on his boots and came out.

The clouds were low in the sky, smothering the village under heavy, moving darkness. He couldn't see the snow fortifications from where he was. _They are slow. They have to be. _Powder snow was falling, planting invisible bites on his face and neck.

A fire had been lit in the centre of the village, larger than what he had been used to see at the South Pole, radiant enough that its light spread over the tents. The foreigners' faces shone with the glow of the flames. He could even see theirs hands, freed of the heavy gloves and reaching for the food and warmth.

Some of the laughter died down when he appeared, but the next moment Sokka was walking towards him and making fun of his too-large clothes. Children giggled, the faces relaxed, and before he could grasp what on earth was going on Zuko was pushed towards the campfire, and the circle closed in around him. Someone pulled the parka's hood down over his eyes before he could protest.

The pieces of meat gave off a strong smell as they roasted. They dripped with grease that was collected in bone containers and passed around. Sokka's grandmother put one of those bowls in his hands. In a fairly recent past the young prince would probably have been repelled by this bloody slab of meat swimming in its own fat.

He nodded, thankful, and immediately started eating.

He was also given something other than meat, at last. A few berries, as well as the dried fruits he had brought from the wreckage of his ship. Rising his eyes, he noticed that the Avatar, sitting on the other side of the fire, was holding a handful of those. Of course, airbenders and their vegetarian ways. The boy seemed rather ill at ease for once; he hadn't even noticed Zuko's presence in front of him. In a way that was good news: the prince felt neither awake nor furious enough to restart the strange conversation they had had nearly two days before.

The Avatar was throwing quick glances at Katara who, all distress or anger forgotten, laughed at her brother's stories and bit enthusiastically into the walrus caribou's flesh. The monk's gaze lingered with quiet mortification on the girl's greasy fingers and small teeth busy tearing the meat apart. Funny how the dark skin made her teeth look so white. Zuko lowered his head.

The flames' heat licked his face. The snowdrift was dancing above their faces without the cold reaching them. There was quite a lot of noise; the twenty-something villagers grouped in a circle seemed almost many all of a sudden. By his side, Sokka talked louder than everyone else, narrating their hunt with a lot of broad gestures, puffing out his chest. His tale was getting wilder by the minute, but Zuko didn't try to interrupt him. He had never been much of a story-teller after all.

He didn't say a word. Sometimes his face would scrunch into a frown, worry or tiredness. He wasn't sure what he wanted at the moment. For his uncle to be there, a little. For the day to rise, of course. For the circle of smiling strangers to detach itself from him and give him space enough to rekindle his resolve. There was no space. The southern Water Tribe seemed to have forgotten his homeland: blue parkas pressed against him to get closer to the fire, and there was even a toddler sitting against his leg.

A little alarmed, Zuko watched it play with the tip of his boot and drool on it with an air of deep satisfaction. He wanted to push it towards its mother, but he barely recognized any of the faces around him, and he didn't even know the name of the child.

Names. How many names had he bothered to remember in nineteen days? Three, at the most. Two and a half, since he still refused to use the Avatar's name. He hadn't even tried to knw the first thing about the old woman who had healed him, with her cool hands, and whom Sokka and Katara called "Gran-Gran".

But what did it matter, really? He had no intention of staying here.

His guts knotted inexplicably. He had to push his bowl away. Standing before the fire, Sokka had just finished his story. He seemed to have thought it useful to add a dozen owl wolves to their fight, as well as a second aggression by some creature he didn't even know the name of. Women started singing, a song in praise of warriors and hunters, with a smile on their lips. The child was pressing like a dead little weight of furs against his leg, and seemed about to fall asleep.

Time passed.

Zuko would often look beyond the circle, searching the dark where snowdrift swirled without ever touching the ground. Flames drew ephemeral shadows against the tents. If he paid attention he could hear the wind howling behind the screen of human voices, the freezing polar wind that raged beyond the village's wall.

The vague sick feeling in the pit of his stomach wouldn't leave him, the frustration and uneasiness, the feeling he was doing something wrong. He couldn't help starting at imaginary sounds and looking over his shoulder for the sinuous shadow of a reptile.

No one seemed to notice his strange behaviour, though. The cold had grown bitter: most of the villagers had left, putting their children to sleep before they could doze off in the snow, stuffed as they were with food and stories. The little weight pressing against him was taken away.

In the sparser group, Sokka and Katara had scooted closer to the Avatar so they could listen together to the stories their grandmother told. They had done this very naturally, it seemed, as though they should never part again. The monk had forgotten all of his discomfort towards meat-eaters and was leaning against Katara's shoulder, his light nomad clothes an odd contrast to her blue parka, a sleepy smile on his face. There was something wounding in this scene.

Really, what was he waiting for?

The old woman was telling them tales about the balance between the elements, of course. Zuko kept out of the way, and feigned to listen to the story of a war between the sun and the moon above the pole, which was said to have plunged the Water Tribe in the dark for six months, then in the blazing sun for six others, nearly getting them all mad.

Slowly, Zuko moved away from the fire. No reaction. He waited for a few more seconds, breathing in deep as though he was about to dive, and then he tore himself from the warmth of the flames and vanished between the tents.

The wind whistling around his steps seemed to carry the echoes of a victorious laughter, but it could be his imagination. Zuko made his way in the dark, as stealthy as his too-big parka would allow him.

The Avatar hadn't sensed the spirits coming their way, it seemed. Maybe his lack of experience was to blame. Maybe the creatures were much farther away than he had imagined.

Or maybe Aang couldn't feel them because it was Zuko they were hunting.

He breathed out, deep. One.

If he could walk all the way to the strait he had a chance at finding clues, and a boat he would be able to sail. Two.

The Southern Water Tribe had forgotten to hate him.

That made three good reasons to get the hell out of here.

Zuko reached the tent that had been lent to him. There wasn't much to do: his bag was ready; his dual swords sheathed just next to it. The blanket he slept in was folded, a symbolic task he did every single morning since he had been stranded here, as though he didn't intend to come back the following night.

The prince had a moment of hesitation when he saw his cloak neatly folded among his other belongings. The tear made by the claws of the owl wolves had been mended with blue threads that, no matter how fine the work, contrasted sharply with the crimson cloth. His cloak seemed to bear, against all patriotism, a little Water Tribe bar at the place of his heart.

The irony of it wasn't much compared to everything that had happened ever since he had set foot in this village, Zuko thought. He made a face as he put the cloth around his shoulders, and stopped thinking about it.

The snow was falling harder outside. The clouds were dark and low: Zuko could only feel the rise of the sun through the slight acceleration of his heartbeat and breath. He couldn't see much at a distance. That was good, Zuko decided as he carefully walked around the sleeping bison and reached the village's entrance (one of the six giant legs shivered as the firbender came near, but the animal didn't wake up). He had no intention of explaining himself to the villagers, or worse, of having to wonder whether it would have been more appropriate to at least say goodbye.

Zuko gritted his teeth and left into the ice field, tightening his cloak against the ever-falling snow.

He tried not to think of what his uncle would say if he could see him now.

"Isn't it better like this?" he muttered to the absent old man. "Sokka has already been attacked by those creatures. I can't let them come to the village when I swore to the Avatar they would be safe, it's a matter of _honor_. And they just might be weird enough to try and talk me out of it."

A wisp of wind was his sole answer. The snow didn't seem about to recede, but the invisible dawn was giving him strength. And walking felt so easy now that he had no laden sleigh to drag behind him. He found his way as carefully as he could in the poor light, pushed westwards by the heat of the sun in his back. Looking about him, he even found the marks of the sleigh, guiding him to the easier paths Sokka had shown him during their hunt.

Zuko walked until noon without too much trouble, but the veil of snow that fell on him was getting thick. He wasn't progressing nearly as fast as he had hoped: his view was blocked, and the wind was lashing against him with growing fierceness. After a while he had to stop. Agni was but a distant point of warmth, growing fainter in the cold fog. The wind might lead him astray at this rate, and what then?

He looked around, uncertain, but could see nothing beyond the snow that fell before his eyes. The wall of clouds was too thick for daylight to pass through. Only a hazy whitish glow hung in the air. The night might as well have never ended.

The night…

Zuko frowned. He strained his ear, but couldn't hear anything through the howling of the wind. No shadow. No light. He knelt to search the ground. The snow was already covering his footprints. He could still see the deeper marks of the sleigh, but for how long? The cold hurt his phalanx. He grunted in annoyance and urged his body heat down his limbs. A puff of steam came out of his lips and was lost in the wind.

In Agni's name, he couldn't be about to get lost in the middle of a storm…

He shook his head and set off again. He put all his concentration in keeping the marks of the sleigh in sight, almost leaning against the wind to counter its strength. If he could go on that way until the sky cleared, everything would be fine. His fire was held him up. Some of his gestures pulled at his wounded shoulder, but the pain was easy enough to ignore. He tried to quicken his pace, and at once hail started battering his face. He breathed out a puff of steam, nearly spit it in the storm, as though to drive away the sudden feeling of cold and helplessness.

The night might as well have never ended. The wind whistled against his ears like a sardonic laughter. Zuko clenched his fists.

The feeling of being watched. It was here again.

"And what do you think?" He said, unable to hear his own voice in the storm. "That I'm coward enough to be afraid of you during the day?"

This time the shrill sound that echoed in the fog was unmistakably a snigger. Zuko was walking faster and faster. Black things were starting to appear at the corner of his vision, crawling towards him and vanishing again. The firebender tried to breath deeper, to feed the fire in his lungs, but the wind tore the flames from his hands as soon as he could create them. Hailstones struck his face and scratched his temples.

A gust of wind made him lose his balance. He tried to run but the snow gave way under his foot. He sunk to the knee and fell to the ground.

The cold wetness bit the scar on his eye, but he had no time to cry out. He blindly seized the strap of his bag, rolled over on his back and threw a lance of fire towards the sky. There was a high scream. Greasy dust spattered his face. Chocking, the prince shut his eyes to not see the creeping shadows crouch and jump with the disgusting elasticity of rat-worms, to not see again their jaws filled with rust…

_Don't you dare touch me!_

A stream of fire fell from his lips. For a second it covered him whole, the monsters screamed a second time and he was able to rise up. Melted snow stuck to his clothes and neck. He couldn't see a thing through the steam that rose from his skin, he was dizzy with disgust and rage. Under his nails he could feel the bits of iron digging into his flesh, hurting him.

Zuko yelled as he felt something collide with his back, but it was only one of the hailstones; they had grown nearly as large as his fist. The creatures were hiding yet again, _cowards, cowards, what are you waiting for? Fight me!_ Hands ablaze, the teenager rushed at random. He had no idea which way was west any longer, the storm had swallowed the sun, he was alone.

His hood had fallen at some point. Hailstones scratched his naked head like claws. The wind whipped his face and chest, slowed him down. Its noise was deafening, the world was filled with whistles and wails, calls that almost sounded like human voices. Still the mad laughter was the loudest of all, Agni, make them _shut up_, hadn't he just burned several of them?

The bag on his shoulder and the swords in his hand were hindering him, but he didn't even think of letting go. He rose his free arm before his face to protect his eyes from the hail, but it blocked what little vision he had. The wind made him stumble with every step. He tried to face his enemies but the world was spinning, a dirty white filled with invisible black monsters, _no, I won't be afraid._

He breathed in and almost chocked on the frost that seemed to fill his throat, but still he was able to tear his leg from the grip of snow and bring his knee to his chest. He tried to guide his inner fire to the sole of his foot, strike them again. But it would never work, he knew, the wind was already stealing away his balance, his focus, everything was lighting out. With a blind rage he struck the empty air with his heel…

And suddenly the storm was torn apart.

The wind gathered and rose, pierced the clouds. The hailstones were blown away, whistling as though thrown by a sling, and daylight fell on him, blinding. A white monster dived in the eye of the storm.

"Zuko! Your hand!"

He held out his arm without thinking. A dark hand seized his own, and he was flattened against the white fur. Suddenly there was no ground under his feet and his legs were dangling in the void, whipped by the wind. Bewildered, breath halting, he only saw the airbender out of the corner of his eye: tongue sticking out in concentration, driving out the storm with large motions of his staff. Sokka was gripping his cloak in exasperated efforts to haul him onto the saddle.

"You're nuts!" he heard Sokka yell through the raging wind. "Worse than nuts, a psycho! I swear there must be a sea tarantula eating into your _brain_. Help me, damn it!"

Zuko grunted slightly in protest. He managed to lift his arm to put his bag and swords to then sunk his nails into the leather of the saddle and pressed the tip of his boots against the bison's flank, looking for support. Some sick reflex made him look to the ground before climbing up.

Black forms were crawling on the ice fields, hard to make out with all the falling snow, more numerous than Zuko had imagined. Tiny amber eyes stared back at him, glowing sardonically even as the distance grew between them. Zuko tightened his grip and looked away.

"Nuts!" Sokka repeated when the prince was finally hauled on the saddle. "And still a jinx, by the way. You know what's great with you? Next to all the crazy things you pull out, a giant flying bison and some kid waking up from his iceberg to tell us we're gonna save the world? Seems perfectly normal to _me_."

The bison had risen above the last clouds, white strips clinging to his legs. He let out a pleased growl as he let himself glide on the calmer air, the pale sun of the pole shining on his fur. Zuko gazed at the empty sky, gripping his wounded shoulder, dizzy with wonder. The hole in the storm had closed up. The silence was deep, surreal. The Avatar lowered his airbending staff and crouched on the head of his giant mount, trying to find back his breath. He turned towards the two teenagers, grimacing a smile despite his tiredness:

"Zuko was trying to rescue his men, Sokka. That's not crazy."

The boy tried to say more, but a huge yawn interrupted him. He smiled again, sleepily, and lied down on his belly in front of them.

"But you know, Zuko, you should have asked us for help instead of going alone like this. Didn't you hear Gran Gran warn us about the snowstorm? It's dangerous on foot. Also, we had a deal: you make sure the village won't get into trouble for having welcomed me, and we help you find your men. You haven't forgotten, have you?"

"We'll keep searching the pole for a while," he went on. "If we can't find your crew anywhere we'll leave. Then, you'll just have to tell us in which port you want to stop by and look for them. Is that fine by you? We, we go to the North pole, but I've lots of places to show Sokka and Katara on the way, so we're not in too much of a hurry!"

The firebender blinked, slowly. The boy sounded tired, but otherwise relaxed and happy. He threw a glance at Sokka: he too wasn't afraid or even tense, and just rose his eyebrows at him. Zuko gritted his teeth and looked over the saddle once again, but there was nothing to be seen any longer. The thick blanket of clouds spread as far as the eye could see, swallowing the ice field in another shade of white.

The airbender kept talking, missing the prince's agitation.

"So you see, I'm trying to be a responsible Avatar now. I was about to go alone, but Sokka and Katara asked to come with me, and Gran Gran told us it must be our destiny to save the world together. Isn't that great? And for that too, you helped, you know: if you and Sokka hadn't managed to find all that food for the tribe, it would have been harder to leave them on their own…"

"Didn't you _see_ anything?" Zuko interrupted him, his voice a little strained.

It was the airbender's turn to raise his eyebrows at him in puzzlement.

"Like what?" Sokka retorted after a pause. "That there was a storm going on and that it was a shitty idea to go out in that weather? You know what, Zuko? Sleep a little."

The prince threw him a furious glance and sunk back sullenly into the saddle. That some nonbender had passed by a whole pack of spirits without even a slight feeling of discomfort, he could understand. But the Avatar? Couldn't the idiot kid have spent enough time in his temple to receive a proper training?

His hands were still shaking since his fight in the storm, as though ice had entered his arteries. His fingers and toes hurt as his blood pulsed through them, as though his mood wasn't sour enough as it was. In Agni's name, what would his father say if he could see him sitting on the Avatar's mount like this?

There was his truce, of course. The necessity to find his uncle and men. That had to count for something.

And the creatures probably wouldn't be able to follow him up in the air… Zuko shook his head to drive away this last thought, and let his eyes wander around him.

He started when he saw Katara kneeling at the far end of the saddle, facing away from their course. He watched her profile carefully, a little surprised that she hadn't yet tried to drown him in a stream of abuse, as she had done once. If anything, it would have seemed more normal than the rest, what with the Avatar and the Water tribesman chattering animatedly about their next stop, as though taking the banished prince of the Fire Nation as a passenger didn't sound at all like an ethical issue to them.

She didn't say a word. Her dark skin had turned grey. Even through the mittens her hands were visibly clenched on the edge of the saddle. Yet it wasn't the young prince she was looking at with fear, uncertainty, and a vague repulsion.

Fixed as though it could pierce the clouds, Katara's stare didn't leave the ground.

* * *

Next book: The rust

(If I actually manage to write it before the next century or so...)


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